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Legal Victory for P2P in France
nietsch writes "The Register is reporting that a french Kazaa user that had been sued by the SCPP (the french equivalent of the RIAA) has been acquitted by the courts in his county. 'The Judges decided that these acts of downloading and uploading qualified as private copying' Ars Technica has more coverage on the subject, or you can read it in english from the organization that lead the defense."
The French Judge surrenders.
/Why can't you just be happy that someone is sticking it to the Euro RIAA?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Bah, France along with Germany and Russia opposed the war because it would interrupt their nice oil deals with Iraq.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
None of the articles in the post indicated exactly what Antoine did. Did he just post his own content on the P2P network so that he had access to it wherever he was? Or was he pulling content others had posted and thus obtained this content without paying a license? The articles don't make it clear what he did.
If it was the former case then this was a good decision. One of the articles likened this to a library purchasing books - it's not responsible for how the patrons use them.
If it's the latter then I disagree that he did nothing wrong - he stole. People are saying this is OK because you aren't making money from it, i.e. it's for private use? I'm not making any money when I steal a pair of pants from the store and I don't sell them - I'm only intending to wear them for my own private use. What's the difference?
"I would have thought, in this specific occurrence, that it is the US who surrendered to big business."
No, the US govt refuses to surrender to a bunch of leeches who are too cheap to pay 99 cents for a song. And people wonder why we need DRM. Thanks France, for proving that technological measures are necessary to protect IP, because the courts won't do it.
Vote for Pedro