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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!
...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?
Same place BSA pulls its figure from. Out of its ass.
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.
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
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.
Also, before any flame, I live in Canada so it is perfectly legal :)
do.what.promptcmds
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...
That's interesting. Personally, there are many CDs that I would have purchased over the last 10 years but didn't find the cost-benefit ratio acceptable. In other words, it wasn't worth $15 to purchase any of them. So I didn't. Five dollars and there probably would have been a number of sales. Economics 101.
Having said that, there's no way I would engage in copyright infringement by using P2P. I just do without. It's an "ethical" thing in my case; I don't consider it fair use unless I paid for the original. However, as soon as the payment is made then all aspects of fair use are expected. At that point it's my right to lend the original media to a friend or make backup copies or use it anywhere on equipment I own.
It's an attempt to adhere to the true spirit of fair use and meshes comfortably with my world view.
The point is, in the context of the article, how many people actually fall into your camp and how many into mine?
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.
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
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
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...
You can't take the sky from me...
If you live in Canada then you already HAVE purchased them, in the form of the taxes you pay on all media.
I'd be on P2P 24/7 if I lived in Canada for this reason.
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.
Thank god in America already allows free copying of previous slashdot articles.
You were fine until you spewed this...
"Without them, we would still be listening to public domain recordings of Classical music. There's nothing wrong with the Classical tunes, but our culture would be so much less vibrant than it has become without incentives of success available to performers."
People seem to forget that it is supposed to be for the "public domain" that copyright exists in the first place. These things are supposed to go into that public domain no matter what the media companies like to think. That is the problem. Copyright wasn't invented solely for the media companies to make profit but to "promote science and the useful arts". Of course, you couldn't tell that with the terms on copyright these days, but that can change.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
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. ~