The International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry has called on Canadian politicians to overhaul its copyright laws after the country's trade body revealed net music sales in the country fell again in 2005, by 4%, while Canadian record labels are enjoying much smaller digital music revenues than their counterparts in the US or most of Western Europe.
The Canadian courts have been much less willing to back attempts by the music industry to sue, for copyright violation, individuals who share music for free via P2P networks. Judges there have said existing Canadian copyright laws do not actually make P2P file sharing illegal, and therefore only a change in the law would enable the record labels to use the courts to challenge P2P users. While there is support for such changes among a number of key political groups in the country, moves to actually change legislation have been slow, and that is being blamed by the native and global music industry for the poor performance of the Canadian music business.
IFPI chairman John Kennedy said last week: "It's astonishing that a sophisticated nation like Canada has dragged its feet for so long while the rest of the world has adapted its copyright laws to the digital age. The digital music world is moving on - Canada must move with it, or its whole music culture will suffer. I hope that Canada will now embrace the digital music sector, follow the example of its international trading partners and move to implement the long overdue copyright reforms on which its artists, music producers and the whole creative economy depend."
Graham Henderson of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, who have been pushing for new copyright legislation in Canada for a long time now, added: "As legal downloading surges ahead in other parts of the world, Canada is marooned on the sidelines. The goal of a vibrant digital marketplace in Canada will remain beyond reach until our legal environment encourages people to buy music instead of passively accepting theft on the web. Aided and abetted by a vocal fringe group that embraces a Wild West internet culture, the minority of Canadian consumers who steal large amounts of music are unlikely to stop until our country's copyright laws are modernised. Until that happens, young Canadian artists struggling to build their careers face the bleak prospect of further declines in the legal market."