The Canadian Recording Industry Association has filed an appeal of the recent court decision denying CRIA's request for Internet Service Providers to reveal the identities of alleged uploaders of digital music.

On March 13, Judge Konrad von Finckenstein of the Federal Court dismissed a request brought by CRIA that some of Canada's largest Internet service providers be forced to turn over confidential customer information, which CRIA believes could help it sue 29 Canadians for copyright infringement.

The judgment not only denied the request, but also ruled on a variety of issues involving copyright, on-line privacy and the liability of Internet service providers. There was nothing in the ruling that could be called favourable to the record industry, legal experts said.

"Today we filed an appeal of last month's court decision," CRIA General Counsel Richard Pfohl said in a statement. "We will argue that the decision was in error on a number of legal bases.

"In our view, Canadian copyright law does not allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers on the Internet," he said.

"Any owner of intellectual property that can be digitally transmitted has a stake in this appeal process," CRIA president Brian Robertson said.

The appeal comes at a time when news of the recording industry's profits or losses have been highly contradictory.

Last week, the international recording industry association, IFPI, in it annual report on global record sales, reported a fourth year of falling global sales, reflecting a 7.6 per cent drop in 2003 sales over 2002.

Earlier this week, however, industry analysts at Nielsen SoundScan reported a gradual turnaround in U.S. music sales that began last fall and picked up in the first quarter of this year, resulting in the industry's best domestic sales in years. Overall U.S. music sales of CDs, legal downloads, DVDs, and such rose 9.1 per cent in the first three months of the year over the same period in 2003. Album sales were up 9.2 per cent. Sales of CDs, which represent 96 per cent of album sales, rose 10.6 per cent.

CRIA maintains that on a per-capita basis, the Canadian music industry has been one of the hardest hit of any country in the world by illegal file sharing, resulting in sales being down by more than $425-million since 1999. In the past 12 months alone, staff layoffs at record companies have run at more than 20 per cent.

In February, CRIA filed motions to require five Canadian Internet service providers to disclose the identities of subscribers alleged to be large-scale infringers distributing thousands of digital music files to millions of strangers.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association is a non-profit trade association representing the interests of Canadian companies that create, manufacture and market sound recordings. In all they represent 95 per cent of the sound recordings that are manufactured and sold in Canada.