Earlier this month, Canada's biggest record companies, acting through the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), lost a key court ruling. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that CRIA was not entitled to force some of Canada's largest ISPs to turn over private customer data that the record companies say they needed to commence with lawsuits against 29 Canadians for illegally downloading music. In his ruling, Judge Konrad von Finckenstein said that the CRIA had failed to make a case that copyright infringement was actually happening -- essentially saying a P2P file-sharing system was not illegal under Canadian law -- and that the record companies had not presented any evidence that forcing ISPs to turn over customer records was the only way CRIA could proceed. CRIA filed an appeal of that ruling late last week. In that appeal, CRIA claims von Finckenstein made several errors. Of some note, given the fact that the Judge essentially said in his ruling that CRIA's lawyers did a lousy job of presenting any evidence, CRIA appears to be keeping the same law firm to handle the appeal.