In response to an earlier article, Canadian Gnomie Owlbird writes:

In Canada, it is not illegal to share materials (music, documents, images, etc.) as long as there is no financial gain to the downloader through resale. Three decisions by Canada’s Supreme Court have established clear precedents in this regard. The first in January decided that there was no refraction when in the Great Library of Osgood Hall Law School, University of Toronto, materials were copied for the reasonable purposes of study and legal work. A fine point of the decision which became an important precedent was that the established legal meaning of “distribution” in Canada did not infringe copyright laws.

A later decision this year decided that LimeWire-like sharing of music files was not illegal in the case of the suppliers of the software app, nor the end-users of the music downloaded in person-to-person [P2P] file-sharing arrangements.

A third decision decided that the organization of the music industry here, and the Songwriters Professional Association could not sue for recovery of loss of sales and royalties.

File-sharing is not wrong, and in Canada it’s not a crime.