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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.
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.
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?
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
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."
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
...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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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
In France or otherwise.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
"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.
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.
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)