Canadian Copyright Law
Under the Copyright Act of Canada an infringement of the copyright
law occurs when you reproduce another person's work without permission.
This includes plagiarism which involves copying someone else's work and
then making a claim of original creation.
The Act protects sound and image records recordings. Interestingly
there is no mention of digital recordings.
One common misconception is that ideas are protected by copyright. In fact
the Copyright Act only protects the expression of an idea. So for instance
if you have a great idea for a new polygon sorting algorithm and you publish
it on the web, only your published implementation of that algorithm would
be protected. Any other person could come up with another implementation
and claim a copyright. However, ideas are not completely unprotected as patent laws have provisions
that keep them safe.
Determination of infringement is often a question of how original your
published work. The Act specifies that that determination is left up to
the courts. Thus if even a minor portion of your work was copied from
another source without permission you could be liable for fines or criminal
charges.
The punishment for copyright violation depends whether there is a
summary conviction or a conviction on indictment. Summary conviction penalties
can range from anywhere up to twenty-five thousand dollars and/or imprisonment for up to six months.
Conviction on indictment can result in a fine up to one million dollars and/or imprisonment for up to five years.
One great thing about the Copyright Act is that you can plead stupidity
indicating that you were not aware of the copyright. However, you must prove
that you were unaware of the copyright. If the court believes you then the
copyright holders only recourse is a cease and desist injunction.
Interestingly the Act goes on to say that a injunction does not apply in the case of
a building construction. Otherwise the copyright owner could have the building torn down!
There was a case in the States (United States v. LaMacchia) where a bulletin
board operator was giving away free copies of commercial software through his
bulletin board service that was accessible from the Internet. In his
court hearing the judge ruled that he had not violated the copyright laws
because he was not attempting to earn any money from it. Apparently under the
American Copyright Act an infringement of copyright is criminal only if the copyright
was infringed "willfully and for purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain."
Canada's Copyright Act is a little more stringent in that there is a clause
that could be used to cover just about any violation. It is found in section
42. (1) (c) where it states:
Every person who knowingly distributes infringing copies of any work in
which copyright subsists either for the purpose of trade or to such an
extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright.
-- The Copyright Act (C-42)
With the phrase "affect prejudicially" it is very unlikely that a person could get away with the same kind of piracy.