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Private File Sharing To Remain/Become legal In EU
orzetto writes "Italian newspapers are reporting that the European parliament's Commitee for Legal Affairs approved an amendment presented by EMP Nicola Zingaretti (PSE, IT), that makes piracy a felony—but only if a monetary profit is made. As in the EU parliament's press release: 'Members of the Legal Affairs' committee [...] decided that criminal sanctions should only apply to those infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes are therefore also excluded.' The complete proposal was passed with 23 votes in favour, 3 against and 3 abstained, and is intended to be applied to copyright, trademark, design and other IP fields, but not patent right which is explicitly excluded. The proposal has still to pass the vote of the parliament before becoming law in all EU countries, some of which (like Italy) do have criminal laws in place for non-profit file sharing. A note: Most EU countries use civil law, not common law. Translation of legal terms may be misleading."
It's funny because this is how copyright law was generally interpreted in the United States prior to the Napster era. The first criteria (of four) that is used to determine whether something is "fair use" is related to whether the use is "of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes." Today fair use in the U.S. is interpreted so narrowly that might as well be non-existent. What's doubly weird is that the EU is typically more protective of IP than the United States is. It will be interesting to see what happens if this amendment is passed by parliament.
Visualize the world of wine
Oftentimes they gain a sale. Because you now know their software you're more likely to purchase it in the future (assuming it works...) That's the reason these companies give huge student discounts, and is also the reason why a "leaky" copyright system typically works the best for everybody.
Visualize the world of wine
The summary and article aren't clear on this. Will people who distribute files still be liable for damages if found to be infringing upon copyrights in a civil lawsuit? If so, I don't think that it is accurate to call private file sharing legal, it just isn't criminal.
And us being "the people".
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Not how I understood TFA, but of course IANAL.
What I got from it was that a new directive, aimed at harsher Europe-wide criminal punishments for piracy, will be applied only to commercial piracy. Noncommercial piracy is not covered by the new directive. However, if it was illegal in a member state before, then it remains so.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Anyhow, nowhere in the article does it say private file sharing for non-commercial purposes will be legalized, it only addresses it by saying that it isn't addressing that aspect.
They are criminalising commercial copyright infringement. Non-commercial copyright infringement is still illegal. This means that you get sued and pay damages instead of getting arrested and going to jail.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Any bets on the definition of "monetary profit".
monetary profit. 1. Spending less money than you earn.
2. To avoid spending money by conducting illegal activity.
I don't trust politicians.
In case anyone else was interested but ignorant of the meaning of: Most EU countries use civil law, not common law. Translation of legal terms may be misleading., I read a few articles online. I think that this one was the most helpful:
http://fountainoflaw.com/Vocab/commonlaw.html
What I took away (apart from the very interesting history) was that common law expects/requires judges to consider past judges decisions, so the law is a combination of legislated statute and precedent. Civil law on the other hand focuses mostly/exclusively on legislated statue. (I'm sure I'm over-simplifying, so read the article yourself!)
All this law does is make copyright infringement for commercial purposes a crime. Non-commercial copyright infringement isn't in it's scope.
What that means is that, it is NOT saying that "if you pirate a CD for personal, non-profit use, you didn't commit a crime", what its saying is: "if you make a profit from it, you are DEFINITELY committing a crime, no matter what EU country you are in".
If pirating something for personal use is a crime in your country, it probably will still be a crime after this law passes. And if it isn't a crime, this law doesn't prevent legislation that criminalizes it.
First of all, this is a proposed EU directive, not "federal law", a concept that doesn't exist in the EU. A directive means that member countries should implement certain requirements in the directive or there may be sanctions. It also means that these requirements may be exceeded, at the discretion of the member countries' legislative bodies. Finland is one country which already implemented a much harsher copyright law than the EUCD required and it will be free to do so in the future. Private filesharing might be excluded from this directive, but that only means that the member countries are free to legislate as they are paid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H as they like.
Lemon curry???
The interesting thing is... it seems nobody really cares about the artists that AREN'T wealthy.
I'm a classical musician. It's hard to make a living in music when you're purely musical, and not a celebrity figure like most "artists" these days tend to be.
So, the interesting thing about this little feud, to me, is that none of it really deals with the artists themselves. It seems that the RIAA is now seen as Microsoft is often seen (whether or not that's a valid vision of it or not I leave up to your discretion)... we fight it purely out of principle.
But does fighting the RIAA or opening up file sharing and making copyrights pretty much useless actually help the artists at all? I'm a composer... if there were no copyrights whatsoever, and if somebody malicious wanted to steal a work by me (presuming it was even good enough to be worth stolen, of course) and claim it as their own and make money off of it... well, it's rather nice to have laws in place to prevent that. OpenSource Composition doesn't work well. People don't often donate to composers. Copyrights are necessary in a world where people are perfectly happy with stealing other people's music and distributing it. Human nature is easily enticed to take something for free rather than pay for it.
So, what is this whole war between "private" file sharing and the RIAA doing to help the artists, whom, presumably, we all want to protect?
Because there ARE people that will steal other people's recordings and do all kinds of things with them; even among musicians, copying sheet music instead of buying it is pretty frequent (and illegal). Because, of course, we all know that all musicians and composers are as famous and rich as Spears or Shore.
In civilized parts of the world, cell phones have vibrators.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The difference between France and Germany are indeed many and significant - but that's only two out of 49 European countries. And then there's the rest of the world that inherited the system from their European colonial masters.
To quote the website you referred to:This is in fact wrong and not the whole truth. Far too often the French system is seen as representative for all of Europe - which it is not. In fact European Community law is decided in line with previous verdicts - but with greater freedom of "interpretation" that can lead to new practices.
However in each and every European country domestic law is still practised according to national traditions.