So my blood is boiling over the whole downloading music / copyright law thing again today. A judge had ruled that downloading music was not breaking copyright law, and not less than a week later politicians were making grand speeches about "fixing" copyright law. Well, politicians, maybe you should ask Canadians (the rest of us, not just the CRIA) if we think it's broken. Because I don't think it is. And I think a lot of people would agree with me. And are we a segment of the population you really want to piss off right before you call an election? We may not care about money lost to the gun registry, we may not care about money funnelled to advertising firms in Quebec, but by God, don't mess with our music downloading.

Here is the slashdot article that got my hackles up this time. So much did this aggravate me, that I have written a letter to a politician.

Yes, I feel like I'm 60.

For anyone interested, here is the text of my letter:

Honourable Ms. Scherrer;

I am disappointed to read comments you have made at the opening ceremonies of the Juno Awards in Edmonton on April 2, 2004. I do not believe Canadian copyright law needs to be "fixed" to make music downloading illegal.

A recent study by two professors (see http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20040330/tc_washpost/a34300_2004mar29 for further details) has shown that music downloading has a minimal effect on music industry sales. I had thought that the levies paid by Canadians on blank recording media, such as blank tapes and CDs and mp3 players such as iPods, was going to the music industry to offset these small decreases in profits. If copyright law were to be "fixed" I am certain that the music industry would lobby to retain the income from these levies, and I would sincerely hope that the government will not bow to their demands as they appear to be doing now.

The truth of the matter is, the recording industry is not very good to Canadian artists, or artists anywhere for that matter. Artists are poorly compensated for their effort while recording companies reap large profits. I, and many other young Canadians like myself, prefer to support artists by attending live shows and buying merchandise because the artist keeps a greater percentage of the profits. Yes, I have downloaded music; I personally use it as a "try-before-you-buy" system. I have discovered some great Canadian artists such as Wild Strawberries and Delerium, who don't get a lot of radio play in my area, and supported them because I was able to listen to their music after downloading it. In fact, I have bought multiple CDs by these artists because I enjoyed what I was listening to. However, downloading also allows me to weed out terrible CDs before I spend my hard-earned money on them. Perhaps the recording industry ought to look at the over-produced, over-hyped and over-priced garbage that they're flooding the market with these days before looking at music downloaders to explain their decrease in sales.

Making changes to copyright law to make downloading music illegal could easily sway young voters, such as myself, from voting for the Liberal party. The government should be encouraging the recording industry to adapt to market changes and find new, innovative ways to increase their profits. Services such as puretracks.com and newmusiccanada.com are excellent examples of ways the industry can move forward. I am planning to buy CDs from artists I have heard on newmusiccanada.com (such as Broken Social Scene), and I will be buying from puretracks.com as soon as their Mac support is implemented.

When it comes down to it, young Canadians don't want to see our favorite artists put out of work. We don't want to see the recording industry reaping more than their fair share of the profits, either, and so we choose to support artists in other ways.

I sincerely hope to see copyright law remain as is in Canada.

Tamara Hughes

If you want to write your own letter, you can email it to Scherrer.H@parl.gc.ca (Helene Scherrer, Minister of Canadian Heritage) or perhaps even Martin.P@parl.gc.ca (Paul Martin, Prime Minister).

Yeah, I wrote to an MP and cc'd the Prime Minister to bitch about politics today. Holy crap, do I feel old.