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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 music industry is very used to getting their way. They have plenty of money to give to politicians when they aren't giving it to radio stations in illegal pay for play schemes. Give them a while and they will bribe the bad news away...
It means private as in non-commercial, not as in kept hidden from the rest of the world.
What they seem to be looking at is accepting that people are going to use P2P networks anyway, and look at implementing some kind of revenue model to ensure that music publishers don't get so antsy in france that they sue dead people who have never used a computer.
"But," I hear you cry, "what's to stop me using Brand X esoteric open source P2P software?". Well, if you are using and not paying, you are now committing an offence against the state.
Which makes it a damn sight easier to get your arse put in prison.
Cunning.
-- "You never mentioned comets before, Mac. This opens up a whole new area of negotiation." - Gordon Urquart
Must explain the WWII stuff and all.
Like why France was the first country to declare war on the Nazis in Sept '39 while the US just sat on their hands?
Who knew france would be the country to stick up for digital copy rights?
Well, they opposed Bush in his "omg teh terroristz lets bomb iraq!" madness.
I would have thought, in this specific occurrence, that it is the US who surrendered to big business.
But I'm just French. And not even Republican. What do I know about spinning news?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
... we can route all our P2P traffic via proxy/router thru France in order to be immune from prosecution/lawsuits? - sweet!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Yeah, because good relations with Iraq was much more important than good relations with the US, which they traded with twenty times as much, and who would (explicitly admitted) have granted them reconstruction deals had they taken part in the invasion. What great logic there. Sure, it had absolutely nothing to do with three in four French citizens opposing the war. Heaven forbid a democracy listen to its population!
It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.
The _companies_ of those countries might've opposed the war because of that.
The _citizens_ of those countries opposed it because they thought, like most of the world, that the Bush Administration was lying through their *ssholes about the necessity for going into Iraq.
Unfortunately, half of the U.S. public seems to be in a state of willful denial, otherwise he & his cronies would have been impeached and thrown into prison by now.
Uhm before you get too excited about French aid in the American Revolution you should examine the motivating factors. They weren't exactly champions of freedom, they just really didn't like the British, and taking America away from the British would weaken them considerably. It was in their best interest for the revolutionaries to win that fight, but not wanting to get in the mix directly and make life a little more difficult, they just supported us. This is sorta the same way we supported various countries and "freedom fighters" against those evil commies. We wanted to communists weakend, but didn't want to risk a direct conflict, so we just help out the little guy who doesn't have much to lose by fighting.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.