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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.
I'm quite sure that if the person had used for example torrents and uploaded even a bit of the file it would have been seen as distributing. It's nothing new that Downloading stuff in for example Finland or Sweden is completly legal. But as soon as you upload any of it, it's illegal.
I go back and forth on whether a precedent like this is a good thing. For one, yeah, I download things in a hypothetical manner on various peer to peer services. It certainly would be nice to be fully exonerated. It would also force the RIAA and MPAA to rexamine there business models and I think myself and most /.'ers would like the libertarian-anarchist paradise of self distribution and fair prices.
Still, it seems like an exceptionally harsh judgement against the MPAA and RIAA to say that anyone who wants any of their wares can aquire them for free. But, I guess issuing a huge judgement such as this in the USA would be the only way to move us away from record company monopoly and towards fair internet distribution paradise.
Yea, it's called jurisprudence, which translates in English as judicial precedent, defined as a judgment or decision of a court of law cited as an authority for deciding a similar state of facts in the same manner, or on the same principle, or by analogy.
(from my handy legal bilingual dictionary)
All I'm waiting for is an AllofDVD.com
AllofTV.com..
Allof..... heh! it's early
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
We are all internauts in cyberspace.
I wasnt aware that the civil law legal system france uses relied heavily on precedent...
Maybe not, but they used the precedent of if you pay the tax, you have paid the due. The royalty on blank media was the precedent and he was right that the royalty provided rights to use them.. I'm glad to see a court get it right. To fix the loophole, all they need to do is eliminate the royalty tax on blank media, then it could be a different ballgame.
The truth shall set you free!
And if the blank media tax compensates the copyright owners for downloading, then it must also be compensating them for uploading, because you can't have one without the other. So if a country has such a tax, it should make uploading legal too.
Private use is Fair Use.
Copyright has been designed to protect the publishing and distribution rights so to make a copy for private use is "fair dealing"(UK) or "fair use"(US), the court clearly understood that this enhances the cultural richness of France.
What is illegal is making counterfeit copies for gain or public distribution then you hurt the copyright holder.
Now people listen to music and everyone listens to more music than they own, this encourages them to make more music and buy more music.
Copyright was always intended to enhance the cultural richness of the Public Domain by encouraging publication and creation.
It was never intended to create or support monopolistic cartels Practices.
The problem really is the borders of the "virtual world" and the real world. It's not an easy problem, but people will keep stepping on each others toes until some agreement or equilibrium is reached. Look at China. Firewalls a lot of stuff off. France, just said it's ok to cpoy. The US.. don't get me started about the haphazardness of the US in this. Unless countries start disconnecting from each other, this isn't a presedent towards much . The problem existed in the days of BBSs, but it was easier to deal with legally as we were bound my area codes. Made it a lot easier. Now, we are more unbound than ever. It's an all new ballcourt.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Well, from the way my anti-Frenchbashing comments got similarly modded down, I'd say the mods are mostly of the opinion that antifrancism as well as antiantifrancism are both offtopic. I can kinda see their point, but had to take the side nobody ever takes - plus I just like the French, they aren't afraid to think for themselves.
And I think the French judge was right on in this decision. The tax having already been paid, the *AA's were just trying to make more money and scare normal downloaders. There, I said something on topic.
The flamebait mod was probably because there's considerably more in the military history of the French than that bigoted post made out. I mean, you could say almost the exact same thing about Poland, but you won't see anywhere near the amount of anti-Polish prejudice in America that you will of the anti-French variety. Any country that's in Europe has been invaded a shitton of times, Germany and England included. That answer your question?
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Although in this I can see (see me not judging, merely observing) the trend of French trying systematically to piss off America
This has nothing to do with the USA. In France people go to seem more French movies than American ones. So the French cinema industry is probably more affected by this ruling than the American one. And after all, why would a French judge give a shit about another country?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
...now I can't badmouth the French for yet another dumb-ass decision.
Basing a decision on the fact that people are already being taxed for 'illegal use' of blank media (whether they do so or not) and the fact that he did not re-share the data is perfectly reasonable.
I have long argued that in places where blank media is taxed and awarded to the various copyright consortiums should either be lifted or that consumers should be immune to prosecution for being in possession of 'personal data copies' of any given media. The tax is based on the fact of presumed guilt (that's like spanking your children based on the reality that you probably didn't catch them doing *everything* bad... or how about a mandatory year in prison for anyone who owns a gun under the assumption they will certainly use the weapon to commit a crime.)
But giving the people a level of legal immunity based on the fact that they have already been 'punished' for making copies of copyrighted works without permission is a very novel result. I wonder, then, if the media groups will rethink their 'blank media tax' in order to strengthen the prosecutability of other copyright violations?
Well I thought that was funny even if some moron sees it as a troll. If I had mod points I would mod parent up.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
This makes no sense at all. Not everything that anyone does on this planet is done to either please or piss off America.
You just strengthened me in my idea that the majority of Americans have no idea about what is going on in the rest of the world. It scares me.
From the summary:
This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there.
P2P is legal everywhere. Downloading movies is what landed this guy in court. The method used is irrelevant.
Perhaps the submitter meant to highlight the possible point that a P2P user was not held liable for people using his PC to download copyrighted material from - but even then it is still different from the submission text.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Aahh, but in welsh, the letter 'y' is a vowel!
" So as long as a payment is going to someone, the moral slate is wiped clean? "
Actually, yes.
Copyrights exists so people can make a profit, and indirectly encourage them to make more "stuff". Downloading a movie is not about morality, its about compensating authors.
If the author is compensated in a legal way, there is no argument.
Very interesting! Would this not qualify as entrapment were it true?
And is there some written law that says anyone should need to be a friend of the US?
As far as I can see the US on an international-level is rather un-friendly to most nations. (both by policy and deed).
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
This doesn't actually set any kind of precedent at all, because it doesn't need to.
International copyright law holds no provisions for the possession of violating material, only for the creation of it.
Except where countries have reinterpreted and extended their opinions of their agreement with international copyright laws, having a copy of something is not illegal. A very spritely intellectual describing himself as a kangaroo has recently argued that the US is one of the few countries to have reinterpreted and extended on this matter.
Uploading is illegal, downloading is not. Owning is not.
I've always thought it somewhat hypocritical for any government to tax an act that it deems illegal. Something like "you aren't supposed to do this but when you do we want a little piece of the action."
Good for the French.
It's not FACTS, it's a biased selection and description of real events.
For instance: 1.8 million Frenchmen were killed in WWI alone. Less than 1 million American soldiers have died in all american wars, combined.
So how is it a 'fact' that the USA did 'most of the fighting'?
The fact that he's not an American?
Weirder french terms are:
There's worst. An it is an insult to anyone who speaks French: cédérom (cederom, in case you can't see the accents). CD-ROM means something. Now cederom is the correct way to speel the word. Stupid eh? Cederom. Yeah right....
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
No more, no less than any other european nation. That's what all the UE is about : stop the madness.
We pay a similar tax for blank CDs under the Home Recording Act. I can't understand why we PAY the music industry a tax on the media, but we are still not allowed to fill the media with content?!
If we already paid for and own the content, then what's the justification for the tax?! The tax only makes sense if we're allowed to put music we on the disc we didn't pay for.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.