Widening a cross-border split over Internet piracy, a Canadian judge ruled Wednesday that sharing music online was legal while U.S. lawmakers moved to turn some file sharers into federal criminals.
Judge Konrad von Finckenstein's legal blessing was an unexpected setback to the music industry's expanding international effort to stop free and unauthorized downloads. But experts said the judge's ruling hinged on elements of Canadian law not found in many other countries, including the United States.
In fact, lawmakers and prosecutors in Washington headed in the opposite direction.
A House Judiciary subcommittee approved by voice vote a bill that would make it easier to bring criminal charges against file sharers. And Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft announced the creation of a task force to strengthen the Justice Department's efforts to battle music, movie, video game and software piracy.
The bill, HR 4077, drew brickbats from file-sharing advocates, who said that a new study undermined entertainment industry claims about the evils of downloading. The study, conducted by two economists at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, found no meaningful relationship between the rise in file sharing and the years-long slump in CD sales.
The bill by Reps. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas) and Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood) would lower the threshold for criminal copyright infringement, making it a federal crime to knowingly offer 1,000 or more copyrighted works through the Internet.
By contrast, Von Finckenstein rejected efforts by record firms to force a group of Internet service providers to identify 29 customers in Canada who each allegedly offered more than 1,000 songs through file-sharing networks. In addition to ruling that the music firms failed to provide enough evidence of wrongdoing, the judge held that downloading songs for personal use and offering them to others online were legal under Canadian law.
The Canadian Recording Industry Assn. said it expected to appeal. "In our view, the copyright law in Canada does not allow people to put hundreds or thousands of music files on the Internet for copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers," said CRIA General Counsel Richard Pfohl.
Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in Internet law, said Von Finckenstein's ruling could eliminate the music industry's ability to sue individual Canadians. File sharers in other countries may not find similar protection, he said, noting that Canadian copyright law carves out an exemption for copying music for private use.
