Slashdot Mirror
P2P (More) Legal in France
A reader writes:"A french appeal court ruled yesterday in favour of somebody who downloaded about 500 movies, on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn't redistributed them, and that a tax was payed on blank media. This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there. For the details, apparently no distinction was made on the method used to download the movies (upload issues) and the famous EUCD directive was even used by the defending lawyer." You'll want the fish for this one, unless you speak French.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Well, not really : we have a strong code already defined (Code Penal). But for new usages or not already defined cases, we uses precedent.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there.
Not necessarily. It sets a precedent that the downloader isn't doing anything wrong, but I don't think it says anything about the person doing sharing. Note:
on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn't redistributed(sic) them
So he's fine since he wasn't redistributing, but it sounds like the act of redistributing just might change the outcome of the case in other circumstances.
This term is actually also in common use in Poland.
In Italy, the SIAE (local RIAA) interprets the blank media tax to be a compensation for your right to make a private backup copy. Also note that, while you DO have the right to make a backup copy here, you only can if there's no electronic lock on the program being copied -- meaning the Italian people have to pay for a right we can't use.
From the Wikipedia article on the English Language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language): "James D. Nicoll made the oft-quoted observation: 'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.'"
Very brief:
An IT student was sued by 17 movie companies including all the big names and their French distributors for downloading 488 movies over a period of years. He admitted watching them privately, with one or two friends, and sharing a few copies.
The first court, and the appeal court, rejected a claim by the prosecutor for EUR 5.000 in damages (and 10,000 Euro interests and costs) against the defendant, accepting the defense's argument that under European Union law, all surfers (internaughts!) already pay a tax on blank media, PCs and blank CDs that covers their use of these material as consumers.
The main point was that the student's use of the downloaded movies was personal - the small amount of sharing he did was not enough to classify it as "collective use". I assume that if he had shared the movies further, or shown them to a public audience, he would be liable for damages for those actions.
The charge of "piracy" was essentially thrown out.
Further this ruling would appear to affect all EU countries, though the French case will affect only French law initially - defendants in other countries will be able to refer to the same EU conventions.
(Note that the EU conventions are not law per-se, but all countries agree to implement them in national law, so it comes to the same thing.)
Lastly, this would appear to being EU into line with Canada as regards the legality of downloading media for personal use.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
For those who do not live in France, a blank DVD in France costs on average 0.30 for the media and 1.30 for the tax.
Yes, I suppose it is an Ancient Greek prefix and suffix pair, but there's no meaning to it, if you think about it. Inter-naut... would that be between sailors, or sailors of the between? I think it's more Modern Geek than Ancient Greek.
What the media companies wanted to do here is have thier tax and sue the taxed too. They were trying to double dip.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
My point is that France does not use a common law system, which relies heavily on jurisprudence. It uses a more codified system, and that precedent carries much less weight than it does in the UK, the US, or anywhere else a common law system is used.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
That meme has just propagated incredibly well, helped along by the mainstream American media as well as by some French people who choose to play into it's hands. The French are just the people that it's acceptable to hate on an irrational basis today. In the past that group has included blacks, jews, homosexuals, women, and today, France and teenagers. To paraphrase John Lennon, France is the nigger of the world.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
When the legislation doesn't give you a clear answer in a legal dispute, the courts must decide the outcome, using principles of law, international agreements and more.
When a similar dispute comes to the courts, it is important that the it is treated equally, so precedent is applied.
Another reason for why precedents are important in civil law systems, is that it is a principle of the rule of law that rules be foreseeable. If courst would not follow their precedents, people would not be able to plan their actions according to a clear rule, as they can with precedents.
My other UID is 1337
Downloading something is not stealing. You can make unlimited copies of it. Art needs to be free. If artists can't distribute their art freely (and still have enogh money to live) then the state has done something wrong in the first place.
In France the media tax goes straight to the SACEM which handles redistribution of royalties to the artists. Whether you burn a cd or a dvd of legal or illegal content the media tax compensates them from hypothetical losses due to personal copies.
What's funny though is that nobody would have thought this tax could eventually protect the consumers...
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
"internaute" and "courriel" are widely used words and are understood by everybody.
Weirder french terms are:
polluriel (spam)
addiciel (add-on)
applette (applet)
bidouilleur (hacker)
fumiciel (vaporware)
obésitiel (bloatware)
pollupostage (spamming)
rustine (patch)
Not here in the US, since we do not have the lousy media tax anyway.
Haven't you ever wondered why audio CDR blanks cost more than data CDR blanks?
Unknow to most 'english' speekers, 60% of the English language is french.
e.g.
Any word that ends in able, ation, ary in english are the same in french.
most of the words for meat.
alley as in alley way, is a place to go... etc...
As someone once said, English is just like french but pronounced very baddley.
So I bet that most people could pick through the french version and make out more-or-less the jist of the story.
Here's the rest of the reading guide.
avoir = own, to have
copié = (copy, but pronounced badly)
The little words...
de = from / of
du = of/ of the
par = per/through/via
pour = for
ou = or/also
été = were (also summer)
près = near/close
sur = over
Un = a
mois = Me
qui = who
nous = us - we
to = You
vous = You (but more polite).
La = the
ces't = it's (it/that is)
you can probably sed the artical into franglais
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Yes, that's the most likely explaination. There are a large number of companies that sell this service. You can find a large potential list of IPs that people suspect of doing this. The rest of the site is worth a look.
I block this list at my firewall, and I do get the odd hit or two each day from this iptables chain. If you are interested in doing this on Linux, checkout "linblock", a script for applying the list to iptables. Beware though, it's a big list and it can take an hour to apply all the rules!
Jurisprudence is used in ruling in France just as much as in North America for the common rulings where there is no defined law. There really is no difference.
This particular judgement was made based on an existing law that says that, if a piece has been broadcasted to the public (like a movie at a theater), everyone is allowed to make a private copy. Private means you can view it at home, but cannot broadcast it during a public event, or even to a crowd at your workplace, or anything else. In that case, the "broacast to public" was not proven since the guy only invited a few friends to watch movies or gave it to one or two of them.
Now, whine against France again, slashdotters! ;-) There are a lot of niceties like this in this country that makes life much more worth it!
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I'm guilty. But tell me, why do you think it is that so many people are more anti-French than anti-other EU countries?
I'll tell you that. An active campaign during the latter half of the 20th century.
Historically, the USA has not been anti-french. The French were allies in the War of Independence. The founding fathers were very much inspired by the Enlightenment, which was to a large part a French movement. The French peacefully sold Louisiana to the US. The French gave the US the Statue of Liberty. And so on.
But there is an old Anglo-Saxon grudge against the French which dates back forever. That much is true.
What happened, happened during and after WWII. The USA and UK didn't want De Gaulle to lead France, since he was a rather proud/arrogant guy, strongly independent, and would not let himself be convinced to do something unless it was what he considered to be best for France. In other words, he acted a lot like America does.
So France went off on their own, unilaterally leaving NATO, for instance. America responded by calling them arrogant, ungrateful, and playing on existing anglo-saxon stereotypes of 'snooty' French. The french, to an extent, do consider the Americans to be arrogant as well. Whereas both nations have really done nothing other than support their own self-interest.
There is also a general anti-European sentiment in the USA (and vice versa, of course, but the forms are different). There has been a very deliberate effort from the American republicans in the last half-century to paint a bad picture of Europe.
Because Europe is more to the left than the USA, giving the Democrats the argument of a Good Example would be a dangerous thing. So Europe (and France in particular) has been badmouthed at every opportunity. High taxes. Strikes. Inefficiency. Listening to American media reports, you'd think Europe is part of the third world.
And the strategy worked: I'll give them that. You cannot refer to Europe in American politics. It's political suicide. Taboo. Tell Americans something is European and they'll vote against it on sheer principle.
(European anti-americanism is different. Referring to the USA in European politics happens all the time.)
As for the 'french surrender' crap. It's a lie and a prejudice. An uncommonly stupid and hurtful one, at that.
Although in this I can see (see me not judging, merely observing) the trend of French trying systematically to piss off America...
As an English speaking Canadian, I've got a natural tendancy to hate the French, obviously. But I'm sorry, there are two problems with that theory:
1) Canada, and many other countries, have already done all of this for a long time. The tax, the legal downloads, and so on.
2) France is a large source of movies in the international scene. Your rather silly assumption that all movies come from america demonstrates how sheltered a life you live. There are very few countries, other than the usa, who don't watch a lot of foreign films. And no, foreign does not mean "from the usa".
The only way in which you might have a point is that the ruling in the French court is a victory for those who value personal freedoms. And based on what I've seen happening in the usa in the last decade, that's a contradiction to the way you guys are headed.
----- sXe