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Free P2P In France?
cyberbian writes to tell us that earlier in the week the French Parliament voted to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet. This ruling puts them in direct conflict with both the Media companies and the rest of the French government. From the article: " If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes, a French group that defends people accused of improperly sharing music files. The law would be a blow to media companies that increasingly use the courts worldwide to sue people for downloading or sharing music and movie files. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.'s Fox say free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year."
It's a duplicate, same URL as before. I know because I saved the page from a few days ago.
This was the DADVSI bill that was supposed to turn free software into crime.
You have to admire an independent parliament!
... say it will cost them 5 billion...
5 billion in profits? After what costs? Better yet, how did they come up with such a figure?
...er, I mean, curse those French Fries!
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
"If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading"
I was under the impression that it's already legal in Canada.
Or does Canada not count?
People will freely distribute Celine Dion songs without any fear of retribution.
Please please stop saying that P2P is illegal. P2P is legal everywhere, downloading/uploading copyrighted material is illegal.
By the way, stop using IP as an acronym for Intellectual Property, IP is Internet Protocol.
Seriously, 5 billion lost? People that download music and movies would rarely actually buy the music or movies if they had no other choice. This is just more bullshit propaganda spread by the **AA.
Mind you, for successful p2p downloading, there has to be another person at the other end uploading. If this is still illegal, then not much has changed really.
This was actually the case in sweden until not too long ago.
It is also important to note that among those so called pro P2P stand some of the most right winged politicians, namely Christine Boutin, known for her brain washed positions against abortion, homosexuality et al ... You would think of some better advocatee to defend freedom .
IMO this pro P2P stand is taken by a bunch of know nothings politician that just want the free exposure and a chance to look modern and up to date, as the majority of the population here is pro P2P. All this noise is a real shame too as you would think that after 2 weeks of urban riots these people would have some more important things to care about.
One good thing tho is that the actual "ministre de la culture" who is a total dick is in a real bad position now, being defeated by the left and right of the parliament.
Rest assure that the right wing government will promptly deal with this situation and burry the problem fast.
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes
...no civilized country hae outlawed peer-to-peer downloading, that is the technology itself. For a specific exchange to be legal though, you must have the necessary rights to that specific content such as being in the public domain or with permission from the copyright holder.
What we're talking about here is extending the concept of "private copying" to include peer-to-peer downloads. This is allowed by many copyright laws, almost all passed when you had generational loss and copies would be inferior. In short, it is a legal way to copy the works of others without the copyright holder's permission.
Since digital copies are perfect clones, and there's no borders on the Internet, it would pretty much obliterate all copyright in the private sector world-wide. What do you think the odds are of that passing? Not until you see the Devil wearing a pink tutu doing a triple axel on ice skates in Hell.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This HAS to be the result of some drunk parliamentarian doing something to piss of the guy from two counties over. It'd be great if they're serious about it, then maybe our country will take after the French one more time (all the slaverey, murder, lies and all the b.s. our country is based on...i'm convinced we got the ideas from the French), legalize file-sharing, and I can continue to not feel bad about downloading music. Heh.
i would get laid this weekend but my cargo van is in the shop and im out of chloroform
No, it would not be the first country to make P2P downloading legal. P2P downloading for personal usage is perfectly legal in Canada; which is just an extension of the right to private copy which let you borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy for your own private usage. What is not legal is uploading / distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted material; likewise it's an extension of the existing laws, you can't make copies and give/sell them to others.
Just to be precise : the 2 amendments voted are first steps towards the introduction of a global licence for download of video and musical content. People will be able to download content legally if they pay somehow for it. The next step should be to introduce a tax in the internet access fees in order to make the download fully legal.
BUT, that is if the amendements are really fully accepted. The government is trying to reverse the movement and cancel the amendments (the bill intended at first was supposed to forbid P2P and be a real pain in the a**). The debates should start over in mid january.
(Sorry, no english links to provide, everything I wrote is from french sites (ratiatum.com, liberation.fr))
... or not.
That's OK. Our responses will be a quadtriplicate from the last few times we've discussed P2P and copyright.
Poor babies. If they don't want me downloading movies before they are released to DVD (officially), then they need to release the damn things sooner.
I buy a lot of DVDs. I have a small shelf, four levels, full of DVDs, with a box filled with more DVDs right next to it. I despise movie theaters. I'm not going to one, except in very rare cases. But I will see the movie, regardless.
I can't wait for that company Morgan Freeman has founded to start operating. Downloads of movies released at the same time they are released to the theaters.
The MPAA and RIAA needs to accept the fact that they cannot ignore the internet or the consumer. They don't want to work with the internet, because they fear piracy. So either they won't release anything on the internet or they wrap it in obnoxious DRM and at low quality. And in doing that, they are directly responsible for most of the file trading. If the INDUCE Act ever becomes law, they will be its biggest offenders.
Only on
Seems bad, really bad... You can always break the law, as Heinlein once said: "But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do." ("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966). It's much harder to avoid paying a tax that's built into the price you pay for access to the web.
As I mentioned this morning on another story, the problem with illegal copying is that products are priced much higher than their true value. I was in France a couple of weeks ago and saw some fruit stands in Paris that worked based on customers' honesty. The fruit were in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk, you picked whatever you wanted and stepped into the store to pay. Are French people so honest that they will always pay the price? I don't think so. Although I wouldn't mind picking a few 500 euro bills from a box on the sidewalk and then step inside to write a check, no bank in France works the same way grocers do.
Each business must work according to the product being sold. What's so wrong about this bill in France is that they seem to be transfering the duties of the merchant to others. Jewelers in France must provide their own safes and break-proof glass showcases. Fruitstand vendors must keep an eye for people who walk away without paying. Yet the media industry want to transfer to the ISPs the chore of making sure that no one copies a song without paying...
If I were to download a song illegally in mp3 format, then what's the big deal? To me, the product that the artists put out for sale are far superior to mp3s, so what I have can hardly be considered "their product" now can it? Wellll, yeah, but I mean it's like the difference between a kindergarten class performing Tommy as compared to going to see the Who do it live...
Movies, too. You can't get a decent movie downloaded online (from what I hear) that will compare toe to toe with a dvd or what you can see in a theater. Personally, if I were to find the album "White Mansions" on cd in a store, I'd buy it right up. I don't like country music, and am not an apologist for the old south, but that is one killer album with some really pretty music on it. But if I had a chance to get an mp3 of it, I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat, and still buy the cd if I found it later. (just found my audio cable that I can use to hook my turn table equiped stereo up to my sound card and record the vinyl disk album to my hard drive so I can finally burn a cd of it. For those of you who wonder that I am talking about, they used to make these huge plastic disks that ... never mind, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But trust me, a good one on a good turn table on a good stereo blows cds away.)
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
For those that can't be bothered to RTFA, down the bottom you'll see:
"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."
And if you look back up the article (obviously the author was trying to sensationalise this):
"The government can overturn the amendment, either by re- opening debate or if the Senate votes it down when the bill moves to the upper house. French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has asked that parliament re-open debate on the amendment today, Agence France Presse reported."
So only one-tenth of the house were present for the amendment. It seems like everyone else had gone home. 22 of the votes in favour were by a (what appears to be) minority party. As soon as parliament reconvenes, this will be gone. It's way too crazy/stupid/radical, I very much doubt the majority party want this, and you'd need a serious rebellion from that party in order to push this through.
It's not news so much as a political machination that happens all the time ("Quick! They're asleep! Slip in that amendment!")
France loves American culture but wants to preserve their own. By alowing free access, it takes money out of the pockets of the large media interests and makes it less likely that they will be subjected to American films and save themselves the agony of bad translations.
Sounds stupid but it makes a big difference. In US Supreme Court cases -- Roe v Wade for example -- the SC does not "legalize abortion," rather, it in effect illegalizes states from passing laws prohibiting the practice. So if you think states ought to have the right to pass any law the elected officials choose, this type of precedent limits freedom. How does this line up with the France P2P situation?
Except the latter is irrelevant. The reasons for criminalizing P2P were demonstrable harm coupled to an industry lobby created perversion of copyright from limited monopoly for commercial distribution into intellectual "property". The latter's a lie, if the former is as well then banning P2P is obviously unjust. And simple-fun-fact, an activity doesn't need to be proven beneficial to be legal. Stop thinking in dualisms, which are convenient but rarely represent reality.
...first cellphone jammers and now P2P. Maybe they didn't name 'em Freedom Fries for nothing.
rj
In Spain the "right for private copy" allows you to get non-authorized movies and music as long as you don't redistribute or show it to anyone else and you don't gain money from it
The free sharing of resources and pooling of indexed harddisks, what a tragedy.
The grandest vision of the early ftp/http devs has come to pass, and now everyone wants to put the ship back in the bottle. Screw all of you naysayers, this is what the internet was for...the free sharing of information.
I'm sorry so many of you think abundance is such a threat to your livelyhood.
Maybe you should back politcal change in the form of progressive solutions instead of trying to cram decades of legacy materialistic thinking down the proverbial throats of your children's future.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
If the Internet Provider decides to set up bandwidth shaping to limit p2p traffic, it is going to suck.
Rogers in Canada has set Bittorrent traffic to lowest priority which for me has made it take days instead of hours to download anything. Instead of getting decent speeds, I am lucky if I get 17k. I have heard this has also affected iTunes.
Course Sympatico hasn't set up a cap (too bad I can't get DSL in my neighbourhood) but this remains to be seen..
That's exactly why we don't like them.. because they're just like the Canadians!
Well most of the French youth like the USA, and everything around your culture... Why do you hate us so much? You think we wash ourselves only once a week? Well old people in farms are doing this. Oh and we have less farmers than you (proportionally of course).
We have our kind of "rednecks" too... So stop thinking everyone here is like that. That's absolutely not the case.
- Gobelet, fighting against Fox News propaganda
Link
Clever signature text goes here.
Honestly, I think the problem that most folks have with France, Germany, and Canada are that those governments and those people have been extraordinarily outspoken in criticizing everything the U.S. government does, whether we're right or wrong, seem to look down in disdain at us in their natural superiority, all the while ignoring their own faults. France dares criticize the U.S. for racism and its attitude towards Arabs while Arabs are rioting in the streets of Paris demanding fair treatment. We've faced plenty of criticism from the UK. The UK may be with us in some things, but they're against us in others. But the UK at least shows an air of respect, not the condescension we get from France.
You lecture us on democracy. You were the ones who within a decade of the founding of your Republic, empowered Napoleon! You practically welcomed the Nazi troops invading Paris. You lecture us on multiculturalism and yet treat Arabs like third-class citizens and don't give them the same religious and civil freedoms that you demand the U.S. give to people living here! And then you wonder why we wouldn't mind France sinking to the bottom of the ocean someday? Hmmm...
It's Rogers new policy, everything that takes bandwidth has to be cut to allow "unlimmited" bandwidth. As long as they get your money it doesn't matter for them. Unlimited my ass.
1. there are media companies all over the world, and their files are all traded in france like everywhere else.
2. this plants ideas into the minds of legislators everywhere and gives them a test-bed (france) where it's effects can be seen.
3. people worldwide will see this and wonder why THEY don't have similar legislation. We, in the US, do this all the time... anytime something shows up in europe people over here start mentioning it left and right. 'how come WE don't have a law that does such and such???" such copycats...
Basically this is going to start to show to the world that the sharing of files isn't going to cause nazi's to ride in on dinosaurs...
In France at least, p2p is the main factor for the development of high-speed internet access (cable and DSL). If one ISP decides to limit bandwidth, it will immediatly loose customers.
And what do you think are Canada own faults ? Canada are trying to do things right with a limited budget, it's not perfect but at least it tries.
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, just adding a little bit of information since this is my association. Here is the website of the audionautes : http://www.audionautes.net/ But most of our english information is on our blog at : http://www.audionautes.net/blog/ and on my personal website : http://soufron.typhon.net/ If someone ca add it in the news. Thanks to all for sharing the information :-)
So, your family, who just happen to be spread over France, can agree that the French speak better French than the Quebecois. Wow. What an informative and unbiased source. I love it.
35-hour workweeks, legalizing P2P, man, what will they do next?
;)
All this shows is that Bush hates them for a reason
Beaucoup merci, belle patrie!
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes !
Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
Some things to clarify, after reading the comments... P2P is a technology. It is an excellent technology. The 'net grandaddys wanted to make it so we could do this very thing.
I'm really tired of the thinking of RIAA == musicians. This isn't true. Most artists care about their music and their fans.
Only a small portion of artists are bling-bling, Ferrari-drivin', $100,000-watch-wearing, $20M-mansion-living people. The vast majority of us musicians are average, have normal lives, and make normal livings. (It's surprising that rich musicians can be just as terrible as us poor musicians, isn't it?)
The music business is evolving (albeit more slowly than music itself). It will all work out fine in the end. Things will go in such a way that people will make money somehow, and fans will get their product.
It is OK to want to protect one's works. If anarchy was the rule of the day, many of the nay-sayers wouldn't have jobs. Somehow, some way, there's got to be a healthy balance between sharing/access and sales/income. Standing in your living room saying that music and movies should be free because you're entitled to them is narrow-minded. If you'd like stuff for free, work with artists - lend them a hand (technical, promotional, etc.). They'll give you free music and more.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Mr. Donnedieu persiste...
h tml
http://news.tf1.fr/news/multimedia/0,,3275091,00.
This happened before in Canada when Sympatico decided to put a cap on their user's downloads. I can't remember what it was but it was relatively low (like 10 or 20G a month). There was a huge migration over to Rogers. I think that lasted about a month or so before that disappeared. They have since introduced a cap of around 100G but Rogers also has that as well with the extreme package(5M).
I can understand why they would want to do it as it is probably 10-20% of their users who are hogging 80% of their bandwidth (numbers pulled out of my ass but you get the idea and I would be part of the 10%).
The reason this is needed in my area is since Rogers is the only highspeed provider in my direct area which is high density, everybody is on with them. If Sympatico (a DSL provider under the Bell Canada umbrella) built a switch a little closer, I think the cap wouldn't be that big of a deal.
In the meantime, I have to be extra patient....
You know, honestly this is an issue that seems to have no gray area...Granted a potential tax could possibly work, but realistically I think there might be another opportunity of some sort. Most people will agree that the quality of what you download off the internet is not nearly as good as the actual purchased copy. Yet, many people will download several movies, only to discover that they really enjoy one of them, where they then go out and buy the super-limited-release-platinum-extra-feature edition. The industry claims that everyone mooches, while most that are pro p2p use p2p as a way to become exposed to potential things they are interested in. What about the potential of the industry offering "tickets", meaning say you purchase a Warner Bros. Film, within each DVD is say...5 tickets. Those tickets allow you to go to Warner Bros. website, and actually choose to download a movie of your choice (that they are offering for downloads). Even if what they offer is limited and a few yeard old, they'd still be providing "exposure" of their films, and then they could sell the films directly from their site at a discount. This way, corporate hot-shots see that people are viewing some of their older/less popular titles (and they would have more control over it than a traditional p2p), plus they could actually see the increased sales due to people using such a system...
Alright, so I know it's sort of a long shot, but it'd be something that would satisfy many, and actually allow for a middle-of-the-road comprimise.
...and "Intellectual property is theft" :-D
Sorry, couldn't resist...
One of those Europeans...
Thank god in America already allows free copying of previous slashdot articles.
I just don't bother to find out what I'm listening to and go buy it.
I find out and I check if they have a show in town in the foreseeable future.
P2P mp3s and live shows... I like it better than radio DJs and DRMd CDs.
You can't take the sky from me...
It isn't free, that's how it's marketed and picked up by downloaders who don't want to think beyond downloading "King Kong" while not being called a thief because yada yada yada. They have been outsmarted by those they hate most, with a simple carrot on a stick. In fact they put a tax on your ISP bill - you always pay. This is not choice, nor free. In fact, it is a mechanism where you always pay and were the music industry has succesfully managed to infiltrate in taxes. Tough luck for those who didn't buy or download music before. Hey, what if, in the end, all copyable digital services end up this way, because what's the difference? You'd get world with 100% taxes, all for free and no money. It would also be a world with 100% goverment control and no choice beyond what they chose for you. If you are an artist, you wouldn't be able to chose for a pay mechanis where you charge for your copies, and better behave or you won't get money from the tax. Define: hell.
Has the city of Paris really copyrighted the Eiffel Tower as it looks lit up at night, meaning that anyone (including a tourist) who takes a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night has to get permission and pay a fee before publishing that picture? As bizarre as it sounds, apparently this is true. Even if you wanted to post your holiday photos of the 'Eiffel Tower by night' on the web, you would technically have to get permission first. The Eiffel Tower itself was built in 1889, and therefore its likeness entered the public domain long ago, but the Parisian authorities sneaked around this fact by copyrighting the lights on the Tower. They did this in 2003. That's why the copyright issue only applies to the Eiffel Tower at night. So technically it's not the tower itself that is copyrighted. It's the lights on the tower. But you can hardly photograph the tower without getting the lights. This is the kind of thing that sounds so stupid you suspect it has to be false, but David-Michel Davies who's written about this over at FastCompany http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/02/02/ei ffel_tower_repossessed.html appears to have done his homework, so I'm inclined to believe him. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments /2417/
Exactly. Youth was rioting, not arabs.
France, as a member of the EU, has signed up to the European Union Copyright Directive. EU law says that they can't do this. End of discussion. The parliament can vote for what they like, but as soon as a media company takes the issue to the European court, the parliament will be corrected.
Just for the record, 'French' is not a race. There are five or six races that comprise the white population alone there. It's a nationality.
Oh, 'Canadian' isn't a race, either.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I have downloaded millions of mp3's, and tons of movies. But you know what? Most of it gets deleted. The good bands/artists/movies I find get bought, and only those. I hate buying stuff and then realising that.. ah well there is only ONE good song in the whole album. Or.. this very well advertised film is actually crap. Or that game (ex AOE3, so well advertised) is actually CRAP. Thank gods I didn't buy this game, and its almost 60 bucks. But I bought AOE and AOE II with all the expansions, still play them as a matter of fact. The fact is, the times have changed, people don't like to buy "sacked pigs" anymore, but like to have a look at them first. Just as your "demo-locked" program doesn't do it for you... commercials don't do it for me. One example, I used Opera (which allowed you to use the real thing with just a banner) and ended up buying it, because I liked the REAL thing... The MEDIA industry has to really go digital... even if they have to make up their own formats and players to go with them. But if I could sample and buy movies/music online easily I would. (The latter is already possible, but for some reason I still go for the CD's once I've sampled them...;) Thats my five cents, and yeah I still DOWNLOAD ill333g4l files, heh. PS:Back in the day of no P2P people made cd copies, and before that, tape copies... why is it such a huge issue now?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Until I can get in France, by cable or satellite, my favourite shows and movies in the original English, I reserve the right to download and watch the English versions while my wife and kids can watch the French versions on the cable I pay for. All I can get is BBC News24, CNN etc.. and none of them show what I want.
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I know you're only joking, but it's worth noting here that the conflict you're joking about is a good indicator. Due to the disagreements over Iraq, the current US societal expectation is that French ideas will be rejected. And yet, here we have something the French are doing that many of us agree with, and believe is good.
Now, it would be a fallacy to assume that because the French do one good thing, that everything they do must be good. I'm not saying that. But, there is a relationship -- a shared outlook -- between the French view of social issues like P2P, and their view of how one country should treat another.
So, I find this sort of conflict interesting -- not just in this situation, but in any where it arises. We have this societal expectation, and yet something else we believe in strongly or understand better tells us that the expectation might be wrong. From there, we can re-examine our social conditioning, and question what we were raised to believe.
Obvious stuff, perhaps, but in these days of people telling us that sharing is piracy, I think it's good to notice the conflict between our society and our hearts.
> whether we're right or wrong
Give actual examples please. I don't recall Canada, Germany or France voicing any critic when the US invaded Afghanistan. That was the right thing to do, the Taliban had to be taken down, at long last, and that was where OBL was hiding. Good job!
Now I do recall Chirac being interviewed by Time Magazine over two pages and reading a very cogent argument whereby going to Iraq was the wrong thing to do. The US would not be welcome there, OBL wasn't there and neither were any 9/11 mastermind, and it would be a dirty and costly war. Where did Chirac go wrong exactly?
Concerning your main other points, I think you are right, France should shut up on racism and multiculturalism, its model doesn't work very well, but I do remember racial riots in the US as well (LA?). On democracy however I'm not sure who should be giving lessons. Neither France nor the US has any great record of bringing real and lasting democracy anywhere. Certainly for France it didn't work very well in western Africa.
As for respect and arrogance it's mostly a matter of how things are reported in the media. The French media often report US initiatives with skepticism and incomprehension, the US media likes to report French ones in the worst possible light as often as possible lately.
The situation is not healthy. The comprehension is much better between the UK and the US because Americans can tune to the BBC and understand, while Britons can and do watch CNN easily.
I'm a French-speaking Aussie BTW, and I've lived and worked in the USA.