On Thursday, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s decision denying CRIA’s request for the identities of 29 alleged file sharers. Michael Geist now notes that CRIA appears to be misrepresenting to the media the Court’s decision as a determination that file-sharing is illegal:
Earlier today I provided links to some of the coverage from Thursday’s file sharing decision. A small article from Dose, the free Canwest daily paper, was not included (it isn’t online) but merits some attention.
The article features brief Q & A’s with Alex Cameron, who argued the privacy issues for CIPPIC, and with Graham Henderson, CRIA’s President. In response to an open-ended question on his thoughts on the decision, Henderson responds:
“The judge has determined that uploading, downloading, it’s illegal.”
Actually, the court did no such thing. Concluding its copyright discussion at paragraph 54, the court says:
“I make no such findings here and wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made.”
How very odd. Not only has the Court not done any such thing, but it seems quite clear that it has not done any such thing.
Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow has some, er, carefully chosen words on the subject.