Canadian Record Labels Get Indie Record Store Owner To Plead Guilty... For Getting Rare CDs

from the those-darn-pirates? dept

Reader Vincent Clement alerts us to yet another story of a copyright overreach up in Canada, this time involving the owner of a small independent record shop in Ottawa who was charged with copyright infringement and has pleaded guilty, rather than fight it. The details are a bit confusing, but it sounds like the police raided his shop, and took a bunch of CDs, claiming they violated copyright -- but reports suggest that these are mostly legal imports that simply haven't been packaged for sale in Canada. In some cases, the "infringing" CDs were actually CDs of a local band that the store owner himself helped finance. In other words, these are the sorts of CDs you can find in pretty much any independent record store, and are the sorts of things purchased by true fans and collectors who want to own everything they can get. These aren't the types of products that are "pirated" or bought by people looking to avoid supporting a band. It's the opposite. But, the Canadian record labels and police have now "cracked down." Hope this makes the US politicians claiming that Canada is a piracy haven happy.

Filed Under: bootlegs, canada, cds, copyright, imports, infringement, ottawa