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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 wasnt aware that the civil law legal system france uses relied heavily on precedent...
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
That's a seriously cool word. Better than "web surfer" or "'netter". I say we port it to English immediately.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
What happened to the person from whom the movies were downloaded? He/she most certainly WAS distributing them in violation of copyright law.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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.
Although in this I can see (see me not judging, merely observing) the trend of French trying systematically to piss off America, there is one interesting point - the blank media tax. If people who pay for it are not allowed to download movies and burn them on taxed media, then what is its point?
Well, this makes sense, right, because it's not French music anymore, it's freedom music.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
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.
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
...but they have legal downloads...hmm, now they seem more tolerable.
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.
Exactingly.
This signature is not in the public domain.
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.
because they have cheap wine, fine women and piracy does not exist! Viva la France!
Never touch an Irish man's Guinness!@#
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 French are gonna face pressure from the US on this. This will be fuelled by the love-hate relationship the French and Americans have at present. P2P zealots, do not rejoice yet. You could set-up an NX server from NoMachine in France, download whatever you want and send it to GMail's GB storage, then get down to your US based system and download the "goods".
im not familiar with "the famous EUCD directive" - is it anything like the chewbacca defence?
Oh, yeah, this will go over big in sharing communities. Only the leeches are legal. Pretty funny of you ask me.
(I suppose he could have gotten them off oc the usenet, but then how did he get caught?)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
P2P networks don't provide for downloading-only scenarios (i.e. client-server). Thats what peer-to-peer actually means!
P2P clients can and do upload file chunks as you are downloadiung them, even assuming you aren't sharing anything else.
Hey that's not true, they won the war against themselves!
Never touch an Irish man's Guinness!@#
The same argument would not in the US because we do not have the media tax, except on "Music CD-Rs" required by consumer cd copiers.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
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.
-
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
So now that there is a precident for downloading could it be argued that if only part of a file was uploaded then they are not technically distributing anything as what they have distributed is unitelligable data and can't be reconstructed without the rest of the file? :-)
If everyone just distributed a portion of a file and just that portion, is that person guilty of redistributing it? All that would be required is that different people have different parts of the file that they share. I'm not a laywer so there are probably hideous flaws in this but hey, it might be worth asking! If this worked then uploading and downloading suddenly becomes entirely legal (at least in France anyway!).
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
He must have downloaded a few movies from the wrong sharer (i.e. copyright enforcer). But if those files were offered for public download (to trap the unwary), how can they be illegal. Hey, you offered them. Why am I in trouble for taking what you freely offered?
Something is missing in this story so far, and I really would be interested in hearing what it is.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
vive la revolution!
Merçi!
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
War is still on going in those two countries.
Never touch an Irish man's Guinness!@#
None of this absolves the person serving the files, since he is not authorized to reproduce the works at any rate.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I couldn't agree more............
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
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
I think you mean Bittorrent (not P2P). In at least some of the sharing programs you CAN disable sharing completely. With Bittorrent you have to work pretty hard at using 3rd party software or a firewall setting to throttle your upload speed to the point where you can't share packets. Supposedly the original bittorrent client will throttle your download back to make it similar to upload (keeps people from leaching) but in practice, with asynchronous connections, this does not seem to happen much.
P2P does not mean you HAVE to upload, it just works a lot better when everyone does.
...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?
Oh wait, I'm an American.. 'screw France'.. but wait this is good 'go France'. arrgh!
All kidding aside, this could be a good use of the evil WTO's reciprocal commerce laws..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There can be no distinction between uploading and downloading via P2P. There is no client-server relationship (thats what peer-to-peer means!).
Even if you don't make anything else available for sharing, chunks of the file you are currently downloading can and do get shared as you are downloading it.
The reason why nobody raised this issue is that it you are factually incorrect. You most certainly can download and not upload with any number of P2P applications. With some programs all you have to do is not put anything in your shared directory and not download into that directory. While other programs like BitTorrent do attempt to prevent this type of behavior, proper firewalling can deal with it.
What it boils down to is this: P2P is still TCP/IP. There's still a connection from a client to a server. With P2P the servers are individuals' systems rather than big webservers somewhere, and there is often one connection in each direction, but that's it. If one peer wants to connect to you but not allow the reverse, it can be done.
What's going on here?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's called a "joke". The parent is obviously making fun of the "freedom fries" name, and is not really exhibiting francophobia of any kind.
Really, folks; before you hit the "Moderate" button, hit yourself with a clue-stick first.
English press release from French Association of Audionautes (L'Association Des Audionautes)
"The Court based its decision on the article L-122-5 of the French Intellectual Property Code stating that 'authors can't forbid copies or reproductions that are only intented for the private use of the copyist.'"
English translation of that law
IANAFL (I am not a French lawyer), but this seems to run counter to previous rulings there. In the U.S., the Supreme Court would likely intercede in a situation like this, but the French Cour de Cassation -- the only higher court than the Cours d'Appel -- can, as Jean-Baptiste explained on FreeCulture.org's Discuss list, "only decide on procedural problems or legal interpretation, not on legal qualification. As we say, 'Cassation is judge of law and not judge of facts' and this case is a matter of facts and not a matter of law..."
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.
It's "merci". No need for a cedilla before a "i".
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
... if you count in plans to have ISP subscriptions taxed as well.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
Not here in the US, since we do not have the lousy media tax anyway.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Bittorrent has an interesting impact on that equation, because it makes the relationship between uploading and downloading explicit. If I start the client, get the file, have a share ratio of one, and sign off, then how many new copies of the file exist because of my actions? Well, if I hadn't joined, the people who got the file from me would have gotten it from the people I got it from instead. Thus, by my actions exactly one new copy of the file exists: mine.
I don't know if it stands up legally, but morally and practically, the only thing I did was to make a single copy. That's it. Makes it kind of hard to support those $5,000 damages figures for a single file, doesn't it?
There is no mechanism to prevent this
IIRC, if you don't allow incoming connections through your firewall, you're effectively leeching off the P2P service without contributing to it.
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.
Gee, I would have thought that France would have surrendered to the RIAA's demands!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Do you really think this ruling will stick? Come on, the movie industry is just as rapacious in France than in the USA (well actually no... but rapacious enough). If this ruling has even a fraction of the impact we think it has, you can expect an appeal quicker than you can say "Va te faire foutre FNDF" (Federation Nationale des Distributeurs de Films, take it as our local MPAA)
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
" 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.
I will let you read the other replies and also point out that the court accepted that he HAD uploaded but not to a significant degree. Read the article and you will see that this was understood.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Yeah, and remember your helmet before you go riding on the information superhighway, too.
I have to go wash my hands after typing that, yech.
"P2P" is legal? P2P is legal anywhere in the world. What you mean is: "downloading copyrighted movies using P2P" is legal. Sloppyness like this is what will equate P2P more and more with illegal actions in the public's mind, and therefore make it more and more difficult to defend if.
I agree, it is bad when we are outsmarted by a nation of agressive hairdressers. They could at least have used some hair brained logic to justify it so we could still at least feel superior but it does make sense.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Yeah, I know, but does anyone buy those anymore? (Except for people using copiers that require them)
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
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.
Um, yes, I know how TCP works. I'm a contributor to the Freefire open source firewall project, I think I've got a good handle on TCP acknowledgments and handshaking. And it didn't sound like that's what he was talking about.
Why do the Yanks hate the Frogs anyway? I never did figure that out. All I can see really was the Iraq war differences, where the US didn't like the fact that France didn't do what they were told, stood up for what they believed in, and made themselves heard. Ironicly, that's "idea" of being indepentant is what the USA was founded on.
Just don't get it...you hate them for doing the same thing that is supposed to define your own country!
England has only been invaded 4 times, and two of those were so gradual they hardly count. And Germany as such has only existed a few hundred years, although granted they managed to lose two major wars in that time. I take your point though.
I am trolling
The article says nothing about P2P software, only that he downloaded the films. The submitter needs to back up his claim that this will have an effect on P2P sharing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I've not been following too carefully, but what makes you say they'll go against Grokster?
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.
You can't deny that they gave us the Statue of Liberty and helped us win our independance from England. Those two alone should be reason enough for every American to have at least some respect for them. Plus they're onboard with Syria now... No nation is so homogenized that you can say that none of them have ever been good for America, no matter what Mark Twain said.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
I wonder why this is not modded "troll".
I am sure many Americans are completely able to masturbate intellectually too and would even appreciate it.
More seriously, I really wonder how the parent can masturbate -even intellectualy- while watching such movies as Taxi, Taxi 2, Taxi 3 for instance...
thanks for the bashing fun !
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
Plus, the US had it's ass handed to it in Cuba (Bay of Pigs invasion), Vietnam and now Iraq. You can't win all the time, even dispite the power you can wield (e.g. Romans in Scotland, or lack of).
Never mind the fact that the French were correct and the Americans were wrong about WMD's.
Definitely an authentic French person.
I haven't said that, but I'd expect them to do so because the lower court's Grokster decision conflicts with government control of "official publishers". The only point in favor of their support of Grokster is its legal soundness, delivered in a very clear, unambiguous decision by the lower court. I suppose the fact that the lower court's decision was so short and readable, so it was probably read by a lot more nonlegal Americans than most decisions, might make it harder for the Supremes to find a corporate right in this conflict. But the "political" (corporate economic) matters weigh very heavily against some corporations enabling some consumers to do as they please with their data, some of which is controlled by other corporations, and some of which is illegally exchanged.
--
make install -not war
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Did Radio kill Music? No.
But Radio pays money only to original song authors not to recording artists.
So how come radio doesn't kill the record Industry? Back in the day the RIAA equivalent said it would and lobbied hard to stop it.
But no, Radio enhances music.
Radio sells more records.
It creates a bigger market.
People swapping music create a bigger market, everyone listens to more music than they own, if they like it then they buy more like it and go and see the band play and buy merchandise.
In a free market, some businesses fail when they are uneconomic. The RIAA is a Government Enforced Cartel.
P2P file sharing increased CD sales, it brought the CD single market to life, the Figures for the UK are crystal clear.
Even if the "Industry" tries to use the world economic downturn at the time of Napster to hide the facts in the US - they know the truth P2P generated a massive resurgence of intrest in music and thus CD sales.
What is killing music is Overpriced CDs and I-Tunes, Restricted Radio Play, Clear channel owning the venues, Lawsuits against fans, Overcontrol of Musicians, Unfair Contracts and Low pay for Musicians, insanely overpriced 'samples' destroying the vitality of rap, house and ambient, etc. etc.
How come they can do all this in a Free Market Economy? Because they are a cartel with a Government Enforced Monopoly.
Video was a lifeline to the Movie Industry yet they tried to outlaw the video recorder.
P2P will save music, stop couterfieting for cash not fans sharing for free.
Gorillaz rocketed to number 1 Album sales, largely attributed to the pre-publicity of fileswapping.
Fans are loyal they will support things, don't know how to make money out of being famous - then get out of the way of the up and coming.
Fan = Someone who Fanatically supports something or is into it.
I know there was the problem with the Sonny Bono act, but I could understand different interpretations of the USC in that case.
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.
Imagine having asshole neighbors like that.
For example, regardless of whether you like their 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision, few people find any real legal merit in their decision to override the Florida court decision, which thereby awarded the election to Bush. And I wouldn't call Scalia "sensible", while he's going around saying the US government depends on, and is subordinate to, (his idea of) god for it's legitimacy. Clarence Thomas is a joke. If it weren't for the old justices, appointed before the court was as politicized as it now is, there wouldn't be any balance between sense and nonsense in the final arbiter of US law.
--
make install -not war
Huh? All the comments have been in English so far; what do I need the fish for?
Wha? Oh, for the article.
Nevermind.
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.
Actually, the Romans had their asses handed to them by the Picts. Modern Scots are Irish bastards who invaded Scotland and killed off the Pict muthas.
BTW, don't forget about the way Canadian troops from Halifax, Nova Scotia (aka "Brits") burned down the White House in 1812. We 0wn3d Yankistan then and we could do it again if they ever get stupid enough to try to mug us.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Oh that's easy enough to answer. We aren't what we were originally. We are now the Corporate States of America. The regions aren't dividided by borders any longer but they are divided by monopoly and oligopoly powers. And as I mentioned, they aren't divided by borers, I wasn't limiting that assertion to the states within the U.S. of A., but stretching out across the globe.
Oh yes, the C.S.A. rules most of the world now and it's only because the people who can stop it love money more than their world.
This line of thinking is very dangerous. For example I could tell you why do you think the jews have been historically hated by so many people ? :)
Silly things can perpetuate and propagate without having a good reason to exist in the first place. Hate the frenchs if you want (i'm one), but not for a reason like this one.
If you can't find a good reason I can insult if you want
Speaking as a "Yank", I have to point out that a few people here actually like France for at least a few things. True, France is a very independent country, and that makes them somewhat of a thorn in the side of the retarded politicians here.
:P) during the early years of the nation's history. A few even remember that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France.
But most Americans (the ones with a working brain cell or two, at least) don't hate France. We think of France as being a beautiful area with lots of wine and sexy women (and romantic men, according to most womens' dreams). Some people that were able to stay awake through history classes in middle and high school remember that France helped us fight off those evil, nasty, imperialist pigs from Britain (and occasionally their lap dogs in Canuckistan
Of course, the prevailing idea that the French are wussies and whiny little bitches has some merit as well. In World War 2, they seemed a bit wussy (though most countries would've buckled under that sort of attack until the German armies were finally spread thinly enough to whomp on). And ever since, they've been whiny little hippies. Then again, San Francisco is just as bad, and that's something we can't just blame on someone else.
Keep that in mind... Not all Americans are stupid, irresponsible, rude, annoying jackasses. Just the ones in power.
In France or otherwise.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Just an example for you to chew on : the 100 years war. You depict it as being war between France and England, which is totaly wrong. It was a war between 2 princes BOTH claiming to be legitimate heirs to the throne of France ; one happened to be already king of England, but that doesn't really count. The winner happened to be crowned, but that doesn't make it a "french victory" per se.
Almost all your list shows the same void of historical knowledge, because before the XIXth century, Europe was divided into kingdoms, subdivided between lords who had very loose ties to their kings, and would even go as far as fighting between themselves, and against their own king eventually and easily swap alliances.
The very notion of country as you understand it (state - nation) is too modern.
The very idea that "french" as a whole are always beaten is therefore completely absurd, and would have seemed preposterous at the time. It would be strictly equivalent to conclude North americans always lose their battles because Confederates were beaten by the Yankees. oops.
llyntddyrllnyrcddyty
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'll bite on the florida decision. The florida supreme court was making up laws. There _WAS_ a law on the books for how to handle a recount. The only right of the court to handle it would be to declare the two laws in conflict (Federal equal protection to voters vs State voting regulations) and force an emergency session of state legislature to bring the law into compliance. Making up new recount rules is creating law. Judges do NOT create law. Judges do NOT enforce law. We have three seperate branches for a reason. P.S. Miami-Dade county went on recounting anyway, despite the supreme court order. Know why you didn't hear about it? It kept going farther towards Bush the more they counted. They quietly buried it. Gotta love it. Not only were they willing to go against the supreme court, they were only willing to do it to get a specific result. Also, I've cited as many references as you have.
I used to think that Polish was impossible to pronouce, but then I took a year of Polish language classes just for fun. I found that once you learn how the pronunciation works, reading Polish isn't so bad. (There's a lot of what I call "combo letters" that represent single sounds in Polish: cz, sz, dz, etc., and the letter "y" is actually a vowel: a short "i" in English) It can still be difficult at times, but not impossible.
One still runs into plenty of words that are hard to pronounce (the city of Szczebrzeszyn is my favorite), but it can be done. The two-letter "Szcz" combo (Sz = sh, and cz = ch ) that comes before some Polish words is particularly hard on my poor American tongue.
My Polish teacher also had us try to say a Polish tongue twister. That was impossible: the language is a tongue twister as it is without adding that.
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.
Ha! They block my work IP (it's in 20.x.x.x, if that means anything). Clearly I work for a company that's mean to filesharers. Huh. I had no idea; I thought it was a tech support and hosting company.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Expect America to invade France within the month.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No more, no less than any other european nation. That's what all the UE is about : stop the madness.
Outrageous claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is some credible evidence for this "Bush-favorable" secret recount?
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make install -not war
From the same source:
A Net surfer, continued to have downloaded or have copied nearly 500 films from the Internet or to the DVD, was released by the Court of Appeal of Montpellier, déboutant 17 giants of the cinema who had constituted civil parts.
Yes, there is only one DVD in France. It's illegal to copy movies to it.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I believe, in technical parlance, that you FAIL IT.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
There is a very high degree of crossover in the English and French languages, but it would be very hard to prove, conclusively, that a word "came from France" or "came from England", as opposed to coming from one of the common sources and simply being adopted at different times.
The Battle of Hastings involved Normans. I believe they are considered distinct from the French. The bleed-over between English and French was limited as a result of a few centuries of futile war which ended up with neither side actually gaining anything, but both sides nearly driving their countries bankrupt.
To add to the useless trivia, the origins of the spellings for the numbers Eleven and Twelve, in English, French and German (and probably other European languages) is unclear but probably far older than the current spelling of any other number.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Yet Slashdot pisses and moans whenever a BitTorrent distribution site is shut down.
So, what you are saying is you don't know what BitTorrent is? Those sites don't host the movies/songs/whatever. Rephrase that sentence with "tracker" instead of "distribution site" and you may be correct.
This makes me a little less ticked about Chirac and his nuclear crap a few years ago. France did something right - something very right! Maybe they'll start exporting groovy morals in addition to their kickass food. (And not, in the words of Dennis Leary, have Americans "turn the 'kwoiosson' into the Croissanwich.")
Earlier this week, the US decided to renounce and reject the treaty, on the grounds that other countries were trying to use it to gain access to their citizens detained in the US.
Apparently, international law is for the convenience of America to impose its views on other nations and woe betide those who try to use it the other way round. International Law, according to the current administration, is a one-way street, with US checkpoints at both ends, each of which has the right to fire at will at anything that moves.
The last time things got this bad for any nation, England passed a law stating that NO king may ever again hold the name of John. Now, that is seriously pissed off.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They had fine wine, cheap women, and the French, Spanish and British Governments ran the biggest piracy operations on the high seas that have ever been seen.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hey, the last time these Reaganauts were running the State Department, the US mined Nicaragua's harbors in 1986, got busted in the World Court, and withdrew the US from the World Court.
International law is not so much for America to impose its views on other nations, as to protect America from international accountability for murder.
The last time things got this bad in America, we kicked out the king of England, and passed a series of laws saying we couldn't have kings in America. So much for laws - we've got King George, in everything but name.
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make install -not war
Hey, he's working on it as fast as he can! He's got the "George" bit done.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> they gave us the Statue of Liberty and helped us win our independance from England. Those two alone should be reason enough for every American to have at least some respect for them
No one from those times are still alive. Things change. We cannot be forever indebted to a country because they did something 200 years ago.
Who I have respect for are the French people who fought and died, or even quietly supported us from France. None of them are alive now.
There are plenty of current reasons to respect them, this being only a minor one IMO.
There are two things here: P2P and copyright infringement. The problem is, they are not the same thing. By saying P2P is Legal because someone was declared not liable for copyright infringement is irrelevant.
The true test of P2P legality comes from issues such as MGM v. Grokster and the various INDUCE bills floating around the US and particularly California.
The issue here isn't the current state of affairs with P2P being a massive utility for copyright infringement, it is the potential for a zero-cost infinite distribution channel for publishers. That potential is what P2P is really all about.
http://pixelcort.com/
Yeah, but they were FRENCH!
Now all that needs to be done is a similar ruling in America's supreme court, or better yet a ruling that miraculously puts the heads of the RIAA in jail for life... Yeah, I'll dream on.
That doesn't mean that the judge's thinking is unimportant, just no-one else can rely upon it.
Who has actually watched 500 different movies?
Who would actually download and keep all 500 of them?
the **aas are american organizations [although they want to be the world's police].
sum.zero
It might be possible. Now that I'm not at work, I can mention Computer Sciences Corporation, my employer. They're a ginormous outsourcing company, employing something like ninety thousand IT professionals. (Professional, me---ha!) They also have data centers and managed hosting in a number of places, including where I work. Big room with complicated doors and a Halon system. So maybe the "do mean things to P2P" application is hosted there.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They have three divisions of lawyers, an armored brigade of bought-out radio hosts and two heavy cruisers made entirely of recycled bankrupcy filings.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So France went off on their own, unilaterally leaving NATO, for instance.
This is wrong.
France is a NATO member and was so since founding. France however has the majority (or all?) of their troups *NOT* under NATO high command but under their own.
Especially the nuclear forces and naval forces, also the foreign legion, are outside of the NATO.
But you can not construct from that, that France has left the NATO.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Which artists get the royalties, if they don't know what content is being downloaded?
You are correct. France is a NATO member.
However, France (under De Gaulle) did leave NATO military command completely in 1966, which is the specific incident I was referring to. They rejoined (in part) in 1992.
Still, my point in the post was to point out that France has not related to NATO in the same way as the rest of the NATO member, not to give a detailed history of NATO.
"There is also a general anti-European sentiment in the USA (and vice versa, of course, but the forms are different)."
Could you elaborate on that? (apart from the "Referring to the USA in European politics happens all the time")
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---