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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.
That's a seriously cool word. Better than "web surfer" or "'netter". I say we port it to English immediately.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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.
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