Clean up your own act CRIA before you send in the RCMP

Legend Records, Wellington St. Ottawa, 1 million LPs and CDs

Updated December 19th, 2009 to correct Ottawa Citizen coverage.

The big headline in the Ottawa Citizen is Record story owner pleads guilty to Copyright Act charge over bootleg CDs

300 words of coverage. However, not one word linking us back to the real criminals in this 20 year feud with downloading and the “bootleg CD”. Even a Google search didn’t turn up the story from December 8th in in the Ottawa Citizen about the $6 billion the CRIA owes musicians for CDs on which they “forgot” to pay royalties.

Record store owner pleads guilty

The RCMP charged into Legend Records on Wellington Street in Ottawa and confiscated 500 CDs in an “April raid.” Apparently they returned 200, finding 294 were illegally copied. The raid was instigated by the Canadian Recording Industry Association or CRIA which fights piracy and makes sure royalties on music are paid to the artists.

Before going to court, most of those CDs were found to be a local indie rock group that store owner David Nolan produced or funded.

In court it got down to one CD, which Nolan plead guilty on for a donation of $1,000 to charity. Nolan’s lawyer “Lazarovitz said Nolan’s collection of 500,000 to a million recordings — which also includes vinyl — is “99.9 per cent legitimate” and that it makes little sense to go after a man who is essentially supporting the recording industry when illegally downloaded music is rampant.” Ottawa Citizen.

It is hard to fight a court case when the RCMP and Crown use their public resources to punish people on behalf of big business. Nolan caved in.

Geist: Record industry faces liability over `infringement’

The Boss can't get paid by CRIA who are keeping his money (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Copyright lawyer Michael Geist reports one of the biggest lawsuits in Canada is against the CRIA.

The artists are suing the CRIA for not paying royalties. People like Springsteen Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, and Sloan can’t get paid unless they sue the CRIA.

Geist says the amount of money could mean a penalty of $6 billion to the CRIA. CRIA are supposed to pay the artists but admit they didn’t get around to it.

That makes the CRIA potentially one of Canada’s biggest corporate criminals, although corporate theft is largely unpunished in Canada.

Corporate media interests color the news

The Ottawa Citizen went to a lot of trouble to report on a small case in the big city of Ottawa. They had earlier covered the $6 billion – yes 6 billion dollar – lawsuit by artists against the very same CRIA.

Not a link, see this story, related stories box or any connection to the politically connected CRIA story they reported only a few weeks earlier. Recording industry facing the music in massive copyright suit

To their credit, Citizen managing editor David Reevely commented below giving us the link.

CRIA lawsuit story updated to link to Legend Records fine

The story was given second play in the paper on December 16th Guilty verdict sounds sour note Copyright law burns record store owner. It is more or less the same coverage with a new headline. Still no links to big CRIA corporate criminality.

Going to the CRIA lawsuit story Recording industry facing the music in massive copyright suit they do link the Legend Records story, which is new since it pre-dates the Legend Record story.

There are two links to the little guy takes it on the chin.

Nowhere in the Ottawa Citizen do they seem to comment on the obvious irony of the CRIA sending in the mounties to beat up on a little guy when their hands are dirty. They obviously know the story. We’ll let the Ottawa Citizen decide why that part of the story was not reported.

This is exactly what Nick Fillmore, a veteran CBC news person, said in Networks and newspapers will not filter the news you see.

Newspapers have lots of reporters covering petty street crime and small cases but ignore corporate criminality. “The traditional news media show little interest in reporting on corporate crime,” Fillmore says in his story.