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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.
This scares me a little. I mean, we should sue the gun makers because guns kill people. We should sue the ore miners because they produce the steel that is used in the guns.
If the French have such a problem with P2P why don't they just block it at the ISP level? Why go after the FOSS developers who just write a program? Because you can't possibly blame the citizens who breach copyright.
This is coming from a country that were happy to set off nukes in the pacific because they didn't what to bow to international pressure. Pricks.
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I believe the territory you are looking for is most of Europe.
Of course, that was quite some time ago, only 30 years or so after the US became a separate country.
that's because stupid is contagious. it's no big secret that other countries emulate the U.S. culture is our greatest export, and so what happens in the U.S. becomes a precedent for other nations. unfortunately, this also includes our political/legal culture.
the U.S. passed the DMCA in 1998, and soon other countries started getting their own DMCA-analogs. so it shouldn't be surprising the RIAA's legal shenanigans are being copied by their foreign counterparts. that's globalization for you.
Yes. Thirty years after the US became a separate country with the help of France.
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Nice urban myth you've got there, but it's not going to work on anybody over thirty or anyone of any age that has paid attention to the subject. Your IP laws are your nations own fault and even those countries that accepted them (eg. a watered down version implemented in Australia as part of a condition for a "free trade" agreement) could have chosen not to so they are also responsible for their own IP laws.
So, to repeat your argument:
I think you might want to work a little on filling that gap.
Just a question, has any of you ever downloaded any French music in your lifetime?
People can't be that stupid, can they?
Copyright was created as a bridge between creators and the market to promote progress. It has mutated into a troll that prevents progress. Copyright is now a monster that must be slain.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The WIPO organization created the treaty before the US created the laws. WIPO is an international organization that consist of many other countries who would have had a say in the treaty. Currently, there are 184 member countries.
The idea that the US is forcing something onto other countries who had a full say in the treaties that they signed on to as well as the US laws being made after words is nothing but ignorance. That's like saying if I asked you if you wanted to watch some movies, then I asked you what movies you wanted to watch, then when your watching them, you attempt to claim I forced you to watch the movies you picked just because I got them from the video store first.
And no, it doesn't matter if the same industry insiders were promoting their agenda, it still doesn't mean that anyone pushed anything on a sovereign nation and I seriously don't think that Mickey Mouse held 150 countries at gun point and said make this treaty and sign this law. The signatory countries negotiated on their own behalf and found enough common ground that they felt comfortable enough with the treaties that they signed on or signed their intent to sign on.
BTW, what legal president have we set? I'm interested in hearing how based in reality you really are.
The DMCA is an evil law. It may have not evil applications, but they appear to be in the vast minority. That it would be such a law was predicted before it was passed.
I've seen the way the US implements treaties. The US only implements treaties to the extent that the government wants to. The DMCA goes far beyond what the treaty requires, and is probably, in a logical system, unconstitutional. (Granted the constitution is too vague to form a complete specification as a logical basis. Many terms are undefined, and much is presumed as common knowledge...including much that is no longer common knowledge. Still, this seems to clearly be a law regulating speech or the press.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.