Slashdot Mirror
French Record Labels Go After Limewire, SourceForge
An anonymous reader notes that TorrentFreak is reporting: "French record labels have received the green light to sue four US-based companies that develop P2P applications, including the BitTorrent client Vuze, Limewire, and Morpheus. Shareaza is the fourth application, for which the labels are going after the open source development platform SourceForge. ... Putting aside the discussion on the responsibilities of application developers for their users activities, the decision to go after SourceForge for hosting a application that can potentially infringe, is stretching credibility beyond all bounds." SourceForge is Slashdot's corporate parent.
That would depend on France's conflict rules, which (unusually, if I remember correctly) are that the courts of France have jurisdiction over any matter harming a French national. You are broadly correct - in the USA or most other countries, the courts would likely NOT have jurisdiction over the case. But France is France. That doesn't mean that the defendant would be able to enforce the judgment though. A US court could examine the question of whether the French courts had jurisdiction over the matter before agreeing to enforce the judgment, and that probably wouldn't fly.
In France, using encryption has long been illegal. I believe even SSL connections weren't allowed until the law changed in 1999.
So I wouldn't call this "stretching credibility", it's just on par for the course in that country where the government clearly doesn't have a clue about IT.
Worse, they're learning about IT - from the media mafia. For example, a year ago there were voices calling out for a complete internet ban for whoever is caught sharing a file, enforcing ISP's to act as police, attorney, jury and judge. Who came up with that idea? The IFPI. Who fell for it? The government.
You really need to look past your ignorance. The DMCA was required by WIPO treaty and as an extension to part of the berne convention as changed to allow the US to ratify it (which BTW, caused the copyright extensions).
The US didn't create the DMCA out of nothing. It was literally response to a treaty that all of Europe and other countries signed on to before we made the DMCA. The DMCA goes beyond the treaty a little but the meat is the same as the treaty requirements. The other countries creating their own DMCA are doing it for the same reason's the US did and that is because of treaty obligations.
Now you can claim that RIAA influenced the treaty and so on, this might be true, The recording industry was responsable for implementations of other treaties which more or less made Phonographs, tapes and CDs compatible across country borders which I would think most people see as a good thing.
Something else about the WIPO treaties, there are portions of them that basically say if the law in one land doesn't address something in the treaty, then the law of the aggrieved land can prevail. This will give France's court Jurisdiction over an American country just like it gives the US courts jurisdiction (including extradition rights) over other countries when violations occur that aren't violations in the other land. If France can pin the Source Forge action to a treaty, a US court must honor it unless the Supreme court finds something unconstitutional in some way. I suggest you look into the treaties we are obligated to if you actually want to effect any meaningful changes instead of blaming the wrong people. You can charge windmills all you want and probably never see changes in what your railing about because you don't understand the concept behind it.
The US didn't create the DMCA out of nothing. It was literally response to a treaty that all of Europe and other countries signed on to before we made the DMCA.
LoL
Yes, the USA created the DMCA out of nothing.
Clinton formed a working group under a guy named Lehman,
BUT, there was resistance in the USA to the anti-circumvention recommendation.
In response, Lehman took a shortcut through WIPO and a bad international treaty obligation was born.
As a result, the USA had to harmonize* the law with their treaty obligation.
The real tragedy is that because the US didn't want to pass the law in the first place,
everyone has to modify their copyright law.
*sometimes this is good and sometimes this is bad. It is rarely good when it is used to shove an unpopular law through your country's backdoor.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
two WIPO treaties that 150 of countries signed on to.
Which treaties are you talking about? The relevant one is the Copyright Treaty, and only 68 countries have ratified it. Another 26 or so have signed it but not ratified it, which means it's not in force in those countries. (Of the G8, only the US and Japan are among the ratifiers.)
The signature on the treaty is used as an excuse by the proponents of it to say that countries have international obligations to put a DMCA-like law in place, but it doesn't mean that at all. The signature is a general sign of support for it, but it implies no legal obligations.