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Canadian Recording Industry Faces Copyright Infringement Class Action
The primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) are facing a class action brought by artists seeking damages for a failure on the part of record labels to obtain licenses to use copyrighted works. These companies have compiled lists of works called “pending lists”, which list titles included on recordings sold by them, but for which permission has not yet been sought or paid for. Ostensibly, the pending lists are for works that may be in the public domain, or for works where the artist is difficult or impossible to locate. However, many artists listed are very popular household names (i.e. Bruce Springsteen).
The class action is seeking statutory damages for each particular act of infringement. Based on the size of the list (over 300,000 works) and potential statutory damages of $20,000 per infringement, the record labels named in the suit face a potential award in excess of $6 billion. Ironically, the record labels often seek to use the statutory damage provision of the Copyright Act to sue illegal file sharers for millions of dollars. The class action suit seeks aggravated damages against the labels for their aggressive enforcement of their copyright interests against members of the public.
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