Traders following the legalities of bootlegs might be interested in this case, in which a man was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to selling products without a copyright. Note, however, that he was selling – not trading – the material.
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Music bootlegger has chance to wipe slate clean
Donating $1,500 to charity part of plea deal
By Barbara Brown
The Hamilton Spectator
(Nov 26, 2005)
From Juno Award winner Shania Twain to Cyndi Lauper, Led Zeppelin, Radio Head, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Gabriel and even Sir Paul McCartney.
Victor Avalis has copied them all, stolen their ideas and inspirations and sold them cheap at a record show at a downtown hotel in June 2004.
Avalis, 44, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of selling illegally produced products without a copyright.
Ontario Court Justice Anton Zuraw handed the Hamilton man a conditional discharge, meaning Avalis will have his record wiped clean if he stays out of trouble for 12 months.
As a condition of probation, Avalis must make a $1,500 donation to a charity of his choice.
Zuraw ordered forfeited to the Crown more than 600 items seized by the RCMP, including 74 bootleg videotapes, 368 pirated DVDs, 145 burned CDs and 23 copied audio cassettes.
They included a DVD of Shania Twain's September 2003 show at Copps Coliseum, a Nickelback concert, a Bob Dylan DVD from a show at Toronto's Ricoh Centre and stacks of CDs featuring the Rolling Stones at the 2003 SARS concert.
Most were poor recordings taped with hand-held cameras from the seats. They were recorded without permission of the artists, who received no royalties for their sale.
The Mounties raided the record show on a tip from investigators with the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).
Graham Henderson, president of the association, said while bootleg videos and pirated CDs interfere with the ability of musicians and bands to sell their official work, they are not the biggest problem facing recording artists today.
Illegal downloading of music from the Internet is believed a major factor in sagging retail sales of CDs and cassettes in Canada over the past six years. Revenue fell 41 per cent, representing a loss of more than $541 million in sales between 1999 to 2005.
Henderson said while those 12 to 24 years old comprise 21 per cent of the Canadian population, they are responsible for 78 per cent of illegal downloading. He said file sharing, illegal downloading and other forms of copyright infringement have reached epidemic proportions primarily due to "extraordinarily lax enforcement."
Despite efforts by the RCMP, the theft of intellectual property is becoming a money-making tool of choice by organized crime, said Henderson.
"Our government is simply not allocating sufficient resources to enable us to bring to justice individuals who commit commercial crimes."
People who make money by infringing copyrighted material have little fear of criminal sanctions, for the courts tend to impose mere fines. "And in the minds of the pirates, that's just a cost of doing business."
Defence lawyer Carl Robertson said he and federal prosecutor Charles Criminisi negotiated a plea deal for Avalis due to problems with the case, not the least of which was the prohibitive cost of prosecuting numerous copyright infringements from around the globe.
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