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France to Legalize File Sharing
quenting writes "In the debate around the anti-piracy bill, the French Parliament voted yesterday into law an amendment to the DADVSI bill that allows free sharing of music and movies over the internet, considering the downloaded files as a private copy. This decision goes against the French government and the music industry's recommendations, who argue the deputies only wanted to show their independence from the government. The initial bill's detractors who pushed for this amendment want a tax for author rights to be paid by everyone on the ISP fees." The French government has vowed to fight this decision (babelfish link).
About time that someone gives the recording industry the middle finger.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
The French Parliment over-reacted here, but it's good to see that the kind of ridiculous measures requested by record companies and their ilk are resulting in equally ridiculous responses from those who disagree. Given the way politics seems to work these days (argue for a few years then go for a 50/50 compromise) then France might wind up with sensible legislation taken from the middle-ground.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I am French, I know how the government works there, and I can tell it will not pass. There is going to be a second reading of the law, and the amendments voted for the "legal license" to download stuff will be removed. Some guys from the ruling party have voted for the amendments, and the government is going to sanction them for that; hence at the next session they will simply be removed.
And if by chance the amendments are still present when the law is voted at the parliament, it is going to be cancelled by the Senate.
Welcome to democracy folks. This is just an advertizing "coup" from the opposition party. In the end, we'll get DMCA too (possibly a worse version of it). I know. I'm from there.
Will the Americans rename the French music piracy to "Freedom music piracy"? Ironically, in this instance the use of the word Freedom would actually make sense.
Eh, isn't Parliament part of government? Anyway, it's the National Assembly we're talking about here. And it wasn't "voted into law," it was simply passed by the Assembly. The chance of this becoming a real law is zero, this is just political gaming in French government.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
"In which case, I predict we'll start seeing things like proprietary derivatives of GPL software emerge and not get challenged. "
In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?
I thought the GPL was a legalistic hack to protect the ethical right to share information. If the government goes and legalises that, then the GPL becomes almost, but not quite, entirely redundant.
"The amendment was approved 30 to 28, with 22 members of the UMP voting in favor. While there are 577 members of the lower house, few were present for last night's vote."
This title is misleading, if the measure was passed by only 2 votes and 90% of the members still have to vote, I would say the title should say that France may legalize file sharing? Or maybe I just don't know the French government very well.
Last night's amendment would allow someone having bought a song from one of those sites to share it with family or friends.
Who needs a law to do this?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
France didn't actually surrender to something (not yet at least)!
Yes, but a couple weeks ago we learned that all it takes to capture Paris these days is sticks and rocks. One sufficently angry record exec with a 2'x4' with a nail through it should be enough to reverse the legislation.
Regardless of law, is it perfectly OK to buy a CD then proceed to redistribute it ad infinitum?
;-)
Yes.
Then why should music be different?
The current system was introduced only at the beginning of the last centurie. We survived millenia without it. Do not think that just because currently the law has made for an industry were none of the normal rules apply that this has to remain the same for eternity.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I must say that this law actually looks good in all ways. If implemented, it will do everything from encouraging the spread of technology, increasing standards of living, saving natural and human resources, and even closing the trade deficit in France. Too bad I'm too cynical to actually think it'll stick.
There is a backlash going on with the voter not taking it anymore. I am not that familiar with france (language barrier) but I do get the impression that it has much the same problems as holland. With a cultural elite (media and politics) having put themselves in ivory towers where they can keep telling each other everything is alright while the real world is going to hell.
Holland had Pim Fortyun and Theo van Gogh and their murderers who upset this carefully constructed fantasy world. France had the recent riots and the continuing rise of extreme right.
With the EU constition it became painfully clear that the politicians were totally removed from the real world. They just could not get that the voters were not going to vote it through just because they told them to.
I think this "protest" vote is a sign that even certain circles of goverment are beginning to realize that something is wrong.
To dismiss this as simply a publicity stunt is cheap. It is like calling the EU constition rejection a cheap stunt by the voters, no this is a way to tell the direct leaders of a country to get their act together. The NEW rules proposed are bad for the public and this was one way to make it painfully clear that there is resistance. Sometimes you have to shoot people in the face to get their attention.
Of course the problem is that the media who are supposed to tell us about these kind of things are the people behind the whole DMCA and similar crap.
But still it is good to see some resistance. I think this battle is far from over. If your leaders got a brain they will not want to have another disaster like the referendum. Of course if they had a brain none of this would have happened in the first place.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I predict we'll start seeing things like proprietary derivatives of GPL software emerge and not get challenged.
Maybe, but it will all be free software. You wont be able to exploit it commercially without following the terms of the GPL. Just as you wont be able to exploit (sell) commercial software or music or whatever, without following those terms.
This seems reasonable to me. So what if the GPL loses some of its wind. If copyright laws are less powerful, the GPL does not need to blow so hard.
"You must be from U.S.A."
Or Britain.
Or Germany.
Or Canada (Well, the non-Quebec parts, anyway).
Or Russia.
Or for that matter, any other country. You seem to forget that NO ONE likes France except the French (And maybe the folks in that suburb next door, what's it's name...Belgium!). Just because the US has recently eclipsed France as the Most Hated Country in the world shouldn't obscure France's long tenure at #1, and it's current solid position at #2 (there's a bad pun in there, somewhere)
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"About time that someone gives the recording industry the middle finger."
...Ok, nevermind that, but this ammendment assumes everybody is guilty of usurping copyrighted material. In fact, you will be taxed no matter what the content of your file tranfers, even if you have never used P2P software in your life.
"...The initial bill's detractors who pushed for this amendment want a tax for author rights to be paid by everyone on the ISP fees."
Frankly, this is dealing with the devil to pay Paul before curiosity killed the cat
Look, I'm all for "sticking it to the man", but this is a fine, fine example of playing off a hot issue to make easy money. I feel sorry for anybody who actually supports this legislative spam in France, thinking it's a good deal or they're "sticking it to the man" when they're in reality sticking it to themselves and their friends.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The US doesn't spend any money on making us dislike France.
Hahahahah, ohh, ah thanks man, that made my day...
France has got making us dislike them pretty much covered.
And how did they do that, denouncing the illegal invasion of Iraq, which lead to the current ongoing train wreck in said country? How dare they, the gall, the nerve, the brass of the beggars! Don't they know they owe their very existence to the Yooo Esss? Why its not like they ever helped the US in any way... Heheh...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I thought the GPL was a legalistic hack to protect the ethical right to share information. If the government goes and legalises that, then the GPL becomes almost, but not quite, entirely redundant.
Your ethical right to share your own information has never been in danger. You could always release to the public domain. The GPL prevents you from taking the shared information, using it, and distributing it but not sharing the result. OSS certainly benefits from the GPL, but it does not require it.
But the article only mentions music and movies, so I'm not certain the GPL would be impacted. They are not talking about repealing copyright; they are talking about expanding fair use. It does not sound like it would be legal for me to take a movie, replace all the credits with my own, and release it to theaters or sell it on DVD. Not having read the proposal itself, I would assume that sharing means a non-profit/p2p sort of thing, not a for profit/selling movies and music online sort of thing.
I'm french and i don't get american political structure neither "President+dog want to legalize torture, while the congress vows to fight it"
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
Maybe we are brainwashed. Maybe we do joke around about the French. But at the end of the day, if (when) it becomes necessary, we will bleed for the French again. We still consider them friends.
It is a too-litteral translation of the French terms : "deputy" is for "député", who is a member of the lower house of parliement, the National Assembly. "government" here strictly means the executive branch of government, more precisely, the prime minister's cabinet (the president, even though he is part of the executive, is usually not considered part of what is covered by the word "gouvernement").
how about France's illegal trade of oil with Iraq against the UN sanctions and Oil for Food programs?
Far be it for me to shed some reality on this nationalistic rhetoric, but if you research the issue, you'll find two interesting items about that oil for food scandal: (1) US companies made far more money on the corruption than did companies of any other country, and (2) the US gov't was very aware of Iraq's violations of sanctions in selling oil. The US even tacitly approved the breaking of sanctions by Iraq exporting oil through Jordan and Turkey since it helped two of our "allies" and would have had an adverse economic impact on them if the smuggling was stopped.
Or perhaps their ongoing (since 1975) campaign to outlaw the use of English words in french advertising and government and scientific papers, like the word "email" because it's too English?
The Canadian province of Quebec has a lot of bizarre laws regulating the use of French in commerce, specifying the size of French text vis-a-vis English on billboards, etc. So what? Why should I care what language the people of another country speak?
The way you portray this is as if it's a human rights violation -- they're regulating commercial speech, not torturing people...
not that I agree that sourcecode is information
Huh? Did you mis-write that? Did I mis-read that? Or did you actually claim that sourcecode is somehow NOT information?
Under the OP scenario, copyright no longer exists as a force to make me open my sourcecode up under the terms of the GPL.
True, but it is expected that that would be far less of an issue. Pretty much all commonity software would be open source. There is very little incentive and ability to produce closed source versions (as people could redistribute the binaries anyway), and trying to go with a closed derivative of an open project would be really lousy. Either you are stuck with that version and no bugfixes or improvements, or you have the huge labor and delay of repeatedly merging all of the changes from the open version into the closed project and of hunting down any bugs that introduces into the closed version.
Or at least that is the reasoning.
So I think even ESR would be satisfied with that system of universal freedom, even though it meant that freedom to keep sourcecode secret. The GPL sourcecode requirement is mainly to keep the open ecosystem viable in the face of the overwhelming current legislatively enforced zero-freedom ecosystem.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?
No source. I suppose you could hack on the binary all you want; knock yourself out. Smart vendors would tie their code to their stuff, so you couldn't run it without buying it.
--
$tar -xvf
Most people had no idea what the constitution document entailed
Indeed, and this would have been reason enough to vote against it.I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
> And the system used in America has been proven to work pretty well for nearly 300 years, and traditionally hasn't had anything like moral rights. Moral rights are crap. Utilitarian copyright is where it's at.
Thank you very much for your reply, so much helpful to show the inherent flaws of copyright logic :
1) Your system has been working since mankind exists, because it amounts to jungle law : the powerful can kick the crap out of really creative people, bribe them, starve them, nobody gives a f*cking shit about it ; hence, this is not *law* as a means to create social balance.
2) If copyright was utilitarian, why the hell the end consumer would not be entitled full distribution rights on something he utimately paid for ? Well, it doesn't, because copyright obviously favors captation of the rights by industry, therefore it's not a true capitalist law, but a legislation of unbalanced privilege.
In fact, this is exactly the reason why french authors did revolt and forced the adoption of our intellectual property laws under the leadership of Victor Hugo.
Uh, no. If that were the case, instead of having to overturn a SCOTUS decision, the Republicans would only have to pass new laws saying the old laws "legalizing" abortion are void, and that abortion is now illegal in all cases. The fact that they haven't done that shows the fallacy of your statement.
What Roe v Wade decided was that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion, and therefore the government has no power to prevent her from having one in most cases. It struck down state laws outlawing abortion as un-constitutional, and thus abortion became legal by default. States can (and have) try to restrict abotion in other ways, but outright banning of it has certainly been declared un-constitutional.
The decision said nothing at all about it being the Federal government's job to decide. In fact, it said it was nobody's job except the woman herself. That's why in order to outlaw it again, pro-lifers need to either get a constitutional ammendment making it illegal, or have the SCOTUS revisit the decision and decide they were wrong the first time, there's no constitutional right to an abortion. To do that, however, would probably *also* overturn our dubious "constitutional right to privacy", since the Roe v Wade decision was based on that right in the first place.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
Next time I am down at the store I get to walk out with French cheese and wine for free. It would only be the fair thing to do.
No, the fair thing to do would be to copy some French cheese and wine. (You do realize that copyrighted works aren't the same as physical objects, don't you?)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Of course, all of the religions spawned in that place and at that time are fanatical. Why is this surprising?
Let's compare the Old Testament, shared by the other main religious competitors:
From Numbers:
31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.
31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.
31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.
31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.
31:13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.
31:14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.
31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Hmm...sounds pretty freaky and fanatical to me. In fact, sounds downright genocidal, in addition to any squickiness about stealing away all of the virgin girls for sex slavery.
'Piracy' by definition is illegal. So there's no way you can 'legalize' it.
File swapping is something else and as the state is the sole authority who is giving the (record) authors _any rights_, they are as well quite qualified to restrict those rights.
Usual record company bullshit.