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P2P (More) Legal in France

Posted by Hemos on from the not-in-the-free-and-open dept.

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.

5 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Here's the Google Translation into English by Hulkster · · Score: 5, Informative
    Would have been nice to have a direct link in the writeup, so here is the google translation into English

    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease

  2. Re:Precedent? by AwaxSlashdot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, not really : we have a strong code already defined (Code Penal). But for new usages or not already defined cases, we uses precedent.

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  3. Re:Opening phrase of the article by fronthead · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.'"

  4. A summary of the article by ites · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  5. Re:Blank media tax... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.