Canadian business leaders are of two minds when it comes to Internet music downloading. In light of the recent legal actions taken by large U.S. recording industry companies against individual users of Internet music file-sharing, COMPAS asked Canadian business leaders for their opinions about this illegal activity. At first glance respondents appear relatively ambivalent about this topic, as the distribution of responses appears fairly random. But upon closer analysis, two distinct segments emerge

One group of respondents are of the mind that government should not become more involved in policing and preventing internet music theft, believing that such activity is a fixture of today’s youth culture and is too prevalent to combat. In contrast, the other group of respondents are of the opinion that government should do more to protect the music industry from this sort of theft, and should do more to make Internet providers implement programs that would prevent music from being downloaded illegally.

These are the key findings from the current web-survey of CEOs and other business leaders conducted by COMPAS on behalf of the National Post under sponsorship of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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