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Apple Sued in France for iPod Music Royalties
alex_guy_CA writes "A musicians rights group in France is suing Apple Computer for back royalties due from iPod sales. It seems in France, all CDs, hard drives, and the like owe musicians money in case any of it is used for piracy. Only Apple isn't paying up." I want compensation from sales of Microsoft Windows just in case it is used for spreading viruses.
This does not bode well for Apple. As a Canadian I know we have the "Blank CD-R Tax", which is comparable to the French tax. There are at least 25 other countries that have similar taxes.
;)
If this French musicians rights group wins their case, this could set a precedent for other countries with comparable laws to sue as well.
As a musician, i feel embarrassed about this lawsuit.
On another note, cue the anti-french sentiment from a post-terror american centric peanut gallery... But at least this gives hope that the USA isn't the most litigious country in the world. Maybe you aren't #1 in everything after all.
Well, it's the law, fair or unfair Apple needs to pay up. Of course, when artists start getting payment from legal users that presume compensation for when the devices are used for piracy, they're more or less waiving their moral claim to any damages for piracy since they've already been paid for that.
"It seems in France, all CDs, hard drives, and the like owe musicians money in case any of it is used for piracy."
Does that mean that organizations like the RIAA are prohibited from suing music downloaders because the musicians have already been paid by the state (perhaps through some industry group), or is this just a tax?
... but it seems a pretty clear-cut infringement, given that the law exists. Perhaps Apple want to make a stand - can't see a USA company getting much sympathy in France though...
... sigh...
Oh if only the virus line were true
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Q: Can the editors at /. let even one story go by without taking a pot-shot at Microsoft?
I want compensation from sales of Microsoft Windows just in case it is used for spreading viruses.
A: Apparantly not.
You probably shouldn't click this.
There are some strange and restive laws out there. You should never just release a product and hope for the best. Especially something that makes money of off copywriten material. While you and I may disagree with the law, its still the law in france and Apple needed to have abided by it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
One thing's that a bit unclear to me is who actually owes this money. Is it really Apple's responsiblity as the maker of the devices, or shouldn't it be the store's since they're the one who set the actual selling price?
Afterall, if the tax is due based on the sale price, any discounts would lower that price.
What if we call it a Freedom iPod.... Will that help?
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
They're only threatening to sue. It's the difference between french farmers being disgruntled and actually pouring manure on street intersections.
Politicus
That will show them!
Seriously, Apple has made an effort to prevent piracy and that should be taken into consideration by Sacem.
Lasers Controlled Games!
If I pay the tax, how much music am I entitled to pirate?
Even that sounds like a reach. Their system is like that used in other nations where there is a fee on media that goes to artists no matter if their work is illegally copied or not.
The question that the article does not answer is if all/any HDD manufacturers pay the fee already. Guess what? If the fee was already paid by the manufacturer then Appled paid the fee already when they bought the drives. Not saying that is the case, but it is something to think about. Also, if no HDD manufacturer pays this fee then the threat is just as stupid as it sounds on the surface.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The last time I checked that only applied to countries in which the medium was manufactured. It really stinks that such a fine peice of hardware is getting bad press of a trivial matter. IIANAL, but what is the legality of Apple having to pay for loyalties only applying to specific countries? Is this something that would be taken care of during the trade agreement?
Steal This Sig
Maybe they're upset because the French word for iPod is 'le iPod' and they want it changed to 'le computerfonografique' or something as equally stupid. You know how the French like to fight against their language being destroyed.
Which reminds me of that episode of Futurama, where the professors says he invented a translator for an incomprehensible dead language, says 'Hello' to it and hears, 'Bonjour.'
In Denmark we have levies too, but we're not paying for piracy, we're paying for "fair use". (Not that we have much fair use left - Denmark has one of the strictest copyright regimes internationally)
The distinction is important. I resent the thought of paying levies on CD-Rs used to make backups of albums i bought fair and square. OTOH, if I were allowed to swap and burn music all I wanted I'd happily pay up.
Of course the politicians aren't interested in this distinction at all - to them it's more a matter of stopping the artists from whining. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, that's how politics work.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The SACEM is very much like the RIAA in France, so it is more accurately described as a "rights group" than as a "musicians rights group".
The tax mentioned exists, but wasn't created without an outcry from pretty much everybody in France, which of course didn't prevent the tax from being created. (Lobbies, lobbies everywhere.)
Like many people I highly doubt that any of the money collected this way goes into the pockets of "musicians". It definitely goes into some pockets, though.
I didn't know that the tax applied to hard disk drives, this was the point of hottest debate; I thought the government pulled back on that one.
If Apple really wants to win they should recall all iPods still in stored in France and put out AD's denouncing the "musicians" rights group and the tax involved, when people can't get what they want is when you get their attention, lawsuits happen all the time but a product being pulled from your country gets things done... "we're sorry, we cannot sell our product to you because is suing us under because they feel they deserve money for every one of our product we sell just in case it is used to pirate music"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
That's a little trite. One has nothing to do with the other, but it is interesting how laws like this in other countries don't generate the kneejerk reaction they do in the US. The supposedly liberal France and Canada both have such a law. Where are all the open-minded, rights-protecting leaders of such countries when those laws were passed?
Point is every country has some stupid laws. And we Americans have been laughing at the French since looooooong before 9/11. That probably started sometime in 1939 or 1940 at the latest. ;)
Incorrect.
It'd go like this (moreso in my wonderful home state of Texas):
*doorbell rings*
"Hello there, I'm from the RIAA handing you a subpoena..."
*smiles*
(Click) Points 20 gague shotgun at the RIAA drone, followed by "You're trespassing. I'll give you a 10 second head-start to get off my porch.."
Now, if the subpoena were served by an actual deputy/process server, then they have leagal right to trespass to serve, without actually entering the dwelling. Joe Citizen (even a member of the RIAA) is not a member of law enforcement and not entitled to trespass to serve legal documents.
But, IANAL.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Go to Google and enter "french military victories"
then click on "I'm feeling Lucky"
I do, that's the problem. I love the idea of a land of freedom, justice and equality. What really burns my gravy is seeing America call itself that, yet do the complete opposite. America is one of the most oppressive western countries. It has the loosest idea of justice (Guantanamo bay, anyone?) and equality you can find. THAT is my problem with America. If America was the America it is on paper and claims (so vehemently) it is, I'd be singing its praises from the highest building.
To be a bit more accurate than the news summary, in France, as in many other European countries, blank media has a long history of having an additional tax that is not aimed as at fighting piracy, but as a way to remunerate _fair use_. The money is passed on to the various artist unions that handle the distribution of royalties, and of course, Britney Spears and other American "artists" get a share of that.
I think it started with blank VHS tapes back in the 80s. More recently, CD-Rs and the likes, and even more recently, hard drives in general.
While it was questionable to tax hard drives in general, since many of them are not used to store media, it is hard to make a case for the iPod's hard drive to be exempt.
I personaly kind of like this system, which is by itself a better, more modern way of artist compensation than copyright is. Of course in France the two systems coexist, so you get the worse of both worlds.
- Activities of COPYSWEDE
(scroll down the page for information about the blank tape levies)
- Blank Tape Levy (PDF document with more detail)
Here's a quote summarizing it:
I personally find these levies very unfair as they're added to all recordable media and you're paying for the music and movie industry even when purchasing CD-R's to archive school work.
I also wonder how they decided what the fees should be. Wouldn't surprise me if they're much much higher (adds about 30% to the CD-R costs right now) than they should be, as people would probably not purchase two identical CD's very often if they were impossible to copy. Hence, in all these cases, they aren't losing money if these customers are copying today for convenience of playing a CD in the car stereo, etc. Usually, media companies and organizations like these totally ignore this important fact.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This is not a "piracy tax", this is a "right to copy" tax. In France, we can copy anything but software as long as the source is legit (comes directly from the rights owner) and the copy is kept for our own private use.
Your friend buys a DVD, CD, book ? Copy it and keep it for yourself - it's legal.
Rent a movie, copy it, bring it back and watch the copy as much as you want - legal.
Buy a CD, copy it, sell it - legal.
Go to your media-hungry friend who owns thousands of DVDs, CDs, books and copy them - legal.
This is really getting insane.. so much of our income is being lost on taxes and royalties that its no wonder the world economy is in the tank.
sure there should be a reasonable tax, and some credit given to 'producers' but we are way beyond what should be considered reasonable.
Problem is most people dont notice until tax time, or when they get hit with a law suit..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And just like in the book, they're "winning". As an example, there's a huge public service campaign now trying to "guilt" landlords into building ADA like features into appartments. The ads feature things like "she's 90 years old and lives on the fifth floor without an elevator". I say they're "winning" because just like in AS, it's their own high minded policies which cause this. French appartments are rent controlled, once you sign the contract your rent can only go up by a minimally, govt approved amount (I think it's 2.5%). Further, people can't be evicted except under extreme circumstances and the elderly and infirm are almost completely exempted from those. In short, there's a motivation NOT to build elevators since you can only try and encourage the old to leave and bring in new tenants at market rates.
You're right though, France is a looters paradise. Want to see Ayn Rand's prediction come true, keep watching France as the baby boom generation retires and the well runs dry.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
The French musicians will surrender...
=)
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Just kidding... nothing like a headline to get some public attention.
But all joking asside, there is some logic to the parallel I am attempting to draw.
If, because of the liklihood that someone will buy blank media and use it for purposes which result in copyright infringment, the artists and organizations 'harmed' should be repaid proportionally to the number or amount of potentially infringing media purchased.
That said, there is a fairly high liklihood that young black males will commit a felony before he is 25. If our conviction rate is any indicator (some 15% of all black males are inelligible to vote due to prior felony convictions) then potentially greater than 30% of all black males will be guilty of a violent crime before he is 25 years of age. If we apply the same logic, we should probably put all black males in prison from the age of 18 to about 21. This will protect the public from the violent crimes that they may potentially commit saving lives and property and will also serve as punishment in advance for anything they may do for which they are never caught.
Please understand that I am being completely ridiculous and I in no way believe the bullcrap I just wrote above. My attempt at writing this garbage is an attempt to draw a parallel at how ridiculous it is to penalize all consumers of recordable media. Just because it doesn't happen in the U.S. is not a reason the people of the U.S. shouldn't be concerned. (We should protect the rights of all if we expect our rights to remain intact.)
I'd like to see a world-wide abolishment of these proactive punitive measures.
We ought to demand a tax on blank canvas, paper, pens, ink, and paint since those can be use for reproducing copyrighted books and paintings.
Those f'in starving (and I'll guess crappy) musicians will have a harder time paying for their supplies than us computer geeks will paying for our blank media. Before long they'll be begging for the government to rescind all the blank media taxes.
--Rob
First, it isn't a tax, it's a levy, which makes it a prepaid fee for copying privileges.
Canadians who've paid this levy (and who hasn't?) have paid for the copyright provisions that allow anyone to make a copy of someone else's licensed/owned copy of a musical work, LEGALLY.
How it works is this: I buy a CD. I can then loan that CD to any friend, and they can make one copy for personal use. Ad infinitum. They cannot, however, pass that 2nd gen. copy or a copy of that copy on to anyone else.
What it means in the online world is that it is perfectly okay for a canadian to download one copy of an audio work for personal listening. It is NOT okay to then upload a copy of that copy (yes, that breaks the normal practice of P2P networks).
So, canadians, leech on, you paid for it. And loan your CD's around to one person at a time, please. Otherwise, work to squash the levy, and we can move to the US IP laws version (why not we're dropping sovereignty everywhere else, eh! OK I'm bitter).
Damn those pesky terrorists
Paper is used for more infringement than any other media. Each piece of blank paper could be taxed, with those taxes going to the rights-holders of published works which may be xeroxed, printed from the Web, hand copied, or otherwise imparted to the paper without permission or payment to the content creators.
If it makes sense for other blank media, it certainly makes sense for blank paper. As for the relative value, look at what we devote educational resources to: 'literacy' and 'numeracy' - activities largely on paper - are viewed as crucial, whereas there is no requirement at all to be able to write pop music to graduate high school. So we should have special taxes on blank media which might be used for pop songs, but none on blank media which might be used for depriving investigative journalists and great short-story writers of income? Are pop musicians more deserving of special income from special taxes than writers? Why?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
See, this is why I hate the french. I didn't understand a thing this guy just said, and I still think he sounded pretty wussy saying it.
(No Karma Bonus, because I keed!)
http://use.perl.org
The fact is that over 25 countries have instituted such a levy in some form or other. We here in Canada have the "Blank Media Levy" on CDs, tapes, and "digital storage in portable digital music recorders" which includes hard drives built in at the time of manufacture as well as Flash and/or RAM. The people who administer this levy (Canadian Private Copying Consortium or CPCC) have intimated that they will go after other hard drives in the future (the next round starts some time this month for implementation beginning of 2005)
The point is that the US people who lobby for this have not been as aggressive so today you don't have the levy on anything but the cassettes AFAIK; but you certainly could.
To those who think they should get some sort of compensation for their copied software, the Canadian Copyright Act actually leaves it open to potential groups to apply for and get status to do exactly that but it seems that nobody but the music publishers seem to be able to get together and actually do it (thank our lucky stars!)
As one of the people who directly opposed the CPCC in their recent initial request to apply a levy of $21 per Gigabyte for the storage in things like the iPOD, I can tell you that you can make a difference if you try. The actual levy approved by the Copyright Board was from $2 to a maximum of $25 per unit depending on how much storage it has in it when manufactured - and no levy on additional storage modules purchased after the fact. This and a hold at previous levels for CDs and tapes was actually quite a victory. I expect the fight over levies on regular PC hard drives will be every bit as hard when it comes.
Let this be a lesson to you - and let's see if you can apply it regarding the DMCA and other repressive legislation that your wonderful government (and the business lobby that pays it) are foisting on the world (see what is happening in Austrailia for example)
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Finally found the text (in french) Here
It does say that the hard-drives integrated into TV, VCR or video decoders and hard-drives integrated into mp3 players (like the iPod) are eligible to the tax.
The law does not apply to hard-drives sold for use in computers.
So this law is not that stupid, if you think that the general law that pay back artists for the right of users to make private copies is a good thing.
BTW, another law (here) says that floppy-disk (3'5 inches only) are eligible for this tax. And this law is probably a lot more stupid.
NB : The site http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr messes badly with cookies so the links above may not work at first.
I know you're trying to be funny, but both Air and Daft Punk are from france. Both of those groups have sold millions of records.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Actually, oil is a strategic natural resource. Iraq is not of interest because Bush or anyone else wants cheap oil. They want control of a strategic resource. Oil represents power, because it represents money and is so critical to the operation of the worlds machinery (literally and figuratively). Being able to control the flow of oil around the world gives the US a great deal of power.
The US barely noticed the genocide of 800,000 Rwandans in 1994. In fact the government took great pains to label it "ethnic cleansing" (and make sure the media did as well) because to call it genocide would invoke treaties which require military intervention to stop genocide. This is just a glaring example of how "strategic interest" governs US policy, not any ethical or moral principles. If it's good for business, if it's good for getting the upper hand over enemies and allies, it's worth the effort.
Human rights is not the reason for invading Iraq, or any of the U.S. involvement in previous years. But to say, "it's about cheap oil" misses the mark a bit. It's about control of oil. If Iraq had nothing but more sand under the sand, Saddam would still be in power. The US has a long and continuing history of upsetting democratic governments and installing despots, supporting vicious human-rights violators, and looking the other way when it comes to people who play ball (Saudi Arabia).
Power and money are the language of America, indeed most of the world. These are what wars are fought over, why people seek office, how the very gears of the global ecomomy works. And the purpose of globalization is to get everybody involved in it who isn't yet. We have created a global system that runs on money and power. To think that this system has any other aim but to continue its own existence and increase the wealth and power of those who run it is illogical.
I think the Americans paid the French back already for those two minor incidents in the 1900s involving Germany.
It's not when the boys got there, it's that they got there.
Then why isn't the US invading North Korea? There is much evidence of the same kind of Human Rights violations and atrocities that existed in Iraq. Well, the answer is that North Korea is not the World's Second Largest Producer of Oil...
Kim Jong Il is simply not as accessable as Saddam. A surgical operation of the kind that was applied to Iraq could not work in Korea. War with North Korea would mean bloody mayhem for everyone involved, and a huge refugee problem on the Korean peninsula. The US wrecked Saddam's regime because it was vulnerable. He was a bad guy who deserved to come to a bad end. The vast majority of Iraqis would agree. As for the oil, the US will get it like everyone else: at market prices. That is more than I can say for the currupt French and Russian officials who profited from the oil for food shame.
an ill wind that blows no good
The British government forces me to pay a levy on blank music CDs; so why aren't I allowed to copy whatever I want on to it? They can't have it both ways, either I pay the levy and copy any music legally, or they don't charge the levy and prosecute copying.
It's a good thing that computers can write music to data CD's with no levy to pay.
A latent existence