The courts ruled yesterday that online file sharing of music is legal in Canada. Now this certainly makes things interesting, especially since I'm of two minds on the issue. I certainly believe that artists deserve to be properly paid for their work, and that stealing music without paying for it is both a moral and legal crime.
Then again, once someone buys a CD, how is sharing that music over the internet any different than lending a CD to a friend so that they can burn their own copy? Hmm....
It makes for an interesting debate -- certainly a great deal more murky than the Americans are making it out to be. Our music-corporation-neighbours to the south have begun sueing internet surfers for illegal file sharing. Whatever your side on the issue, one thing that can be agreed on is that internet surfing is, for the most part, a privacy issue, and such heavy-handed tactics are never going to solve the problem.
After all...are you going to sue everyone? Or are you going to simply shut down the internet? There isn't a single solution big enough to solve the problem. That is, if this is actually a problem...
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Always remember to pop down to the bottom box and check out what I've been watching recently. Today, it's another West Wing entry...
