Court proceedings to sue those who share their music collections with millions around the world got underway in a Toronto courtroom Monday. The Canadian Recording Industry Association asked a Federal Court for permission to smoke out music pirates from the protection of Internet Service Providers. Mirroring action taken last year by the recording industry in the United States, CRIA argued the country’s five biggest Internet service providers should name people who upload a large number of music files. “Our message is for all Canadians. Y
ou’ve got to go off the illegal sites and stop uploading music. Everyone recognizes this sort of distribution is illegal under Canadian law,” Richard Pfohl, the lawyer representing the music industry, including the Canadian branches of BMG, EMI, Warner, Virgin and Universal, said outside court. “People have to realize there are consequences when you break the law in Canada.” After legal arguments by all the parties, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein adjourned the proceedings until March 12. He asked each ISP to file more submissions about the technical requirements of connecting individuals by their numeric Internet protocol (commonly known as IP) address and how disclosing home addresses would affect privacy legislation. Last week the music industry filed motions against 29 John and Jane Does who it alleges are high-volume music traders, storing thousands of MP3 files on their hard drives. On Monday, CRIA started to work through the courts to learn the identities of those people, currently identifiable only through IP numbers and user handles like Jordana(at)KaZaA who, according to court documents, allegedly uploaded songs by Jay Z, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez.
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