European Court Finds Copyright Doesn't Automatically Trump Freedom Of Expression

First time accepted submitter admiral snackbar writes "The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. 'For the first time in a judgment on the merits, the European Court of Human Rights has clarified that a conviction based on copyright law for illegally reproducing or publicly communicating copyright protected material can be regarded as an interference with the right of freedom of expression and information under Article 10 of the European Convention [on Human Rights]. Such interference must be in accordance with the three conditions enshrined in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention. This means that a conviction or any other judicial decision based on copyright law, restricting a person's or an organization's freedom of expression, must be pertinently motivated as being necessary in a democratic society, apart from being prescribed by law and pursuing a legitimate aim.'"

Comments

At last!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new european overlords!

Eat me, Euroskeptics!

[StoneyMahoney]

While the EU has had a lot of criticism (some of it justified) for it's costs, it's impenetrable bureaucracy, and it's tendency to focus on the minutia rather than bigger problems, I think that it would be impossible to practically enact vital laws and opinions such as this on an international scale without it. Big government may be out of fashion on the other side of the pond, but it certainly has it's merits over here (where our governmental needs are different) and this kind of check against the increasing pressure and influence of fanatical commercial interests on the interpretation and drafting of legislation is exactly what we need right now to restore a little sanity to the situation.

Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your main point, this ruling is from the European Court of Human Rights which is not an EU institution. All member states of the EU, and indeed the EU itself, is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights -- but so are several other countries that are not EU member states.

Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics!

[foobsr]

European Convention on Human Rights

Just for some thoughts, quote: "The Convention prohibits in particular: torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, slavery and forced labour, death penalty, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention."

(to be found at http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/EN/Header/The+Court/Introduction/Information+documents/ )

How is that in the US of A?

CC.

Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics!

[foobsr]

The EU isn't that big.

Wikipedia: "With a combined population of over 500 million inhabitants, or 7.3% of the world population, the EU, in 2011, generated the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 17.6 trillion US dollars, representing approximately 20% of the global GDP when measured in terms of purchasing power parity."

CC.

Re:Eat me, Euroskeptics!

[YttriumOxide]

It's simple really. Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed. In the case of the possessive, it's due to a missing "e" that used to be used (the possessive form was made with "es" - e.g. "Peter's cat" really represents "Peteres cat"). This is quite visible in other Germanic languages, but quite hidden in English due to the weird history of our language.

In the case of the possessive "its", it was never written "ites" and therefore does not receive an apostrophe. Similarly, "his" and "her" also never had the "es" ending and therefore also do not contain an apostrophe.

"It's" contains an apostrophe for the missing "i" from "it is" (or in some cases the missing "ha" from "it has") and so it becomes very clear that the apostrophe is required.

If all that is too confusing or simply too hard to remember, relate things back to "his" and "her". You can grammatically replace "its" with "his" and still make sense, so it similarly doesn't take an apostrophe ("Its impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His impenetrable bureaucracy" (no problem)). "It's" on the other hand can never be grammatically replaced by "his" ("It's got impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His got impenetrable bureaucracy" (meaningless)).

The alternative (and more common, but less obvious to me personally) method is to go the other way around and mentally try replacing "its"/"it's" with "it is" to see if that fits.

Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something you owe the french.

Your freedom.

And most of your constitution.

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they ask the french for a refund or a replacement for faulty merchandise ?

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[JAlexoi]

No, that's something we owe Louis XVI. France was most assuredly not a democratic state at the time. As for the Constitution, Montesquieu was a large influence, no doubt, but again was not exactly a democrat or even a supporter of American independence. Freedom wears a crown, eh?

A) You're confounding democracy with freedom. It's the same mistake people make when they talk about capitalism, while thinking of free market. Or socialism/communism and totalitarianism/dictatorship.
B) Freedom may wear a crown. Remember that constitutional monarchy failed in France, yet England's monarchy was/is very much like a constitutional monarchy(it's limited by many laws, yet there is no formal "constitution"). The constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was written by the king!

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[qbast]

Your constitution is fine. You are just holding it wrong.

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[StoneyMahoney]

Have you tried restoring it to it's default settings?

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[six025]

Have you tried repair permissions,?

FTFY. You're welcome.

Re:Take a look at that statue of liberty.

[DrXym]

Also, many European countries have a civil law system thanks to Napoleon. He may have been a dictator but he was a rather enlightened dictator for the time and swept away privileges, charters and other laws going all the way back to medieval times and replaced them with a civil code that enshrined many personal freedoms.

Details

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is crap, but links to a post with more details.

the applicants were Robert Ashby Donald, Marcio Madeira Moraes and Olivier Claisse, respectively an American, a Brazilian and a French national living in New-York, Paris and Le Perreux-sur-Marne. All three are fashion photographers. The case concerned their conviction in France for copyright infringement following the publication of pictures on the Internet site Viewfinder of a fashion company run by Mr. Donald and Mr. Moraes. The photos were taken by Mr. Claisse at fashion shows in Paris in 2003 and published without the permission of the fashion houses. The three fashion photographers were ordered by the Court of Appeal of Paris to pay fines between 3.000 and 8.000 euro and an award of damages to the French design clothing Federation and five fashion houses, all together amounting to 255.000 euro

Notably,

In the case of Ashby Donald and others v. France the European Court of Human Rights did not need to undertake itself such a balancing exercise, as it found that the French judicial authorities have done this exercise in a proper way. As the Court stated, it saw no reason to disagree with the findings by the French courts

I.e., the ruling didn't do squat to help the defendants in this case.

Re:Details

[rmstar]

I.e., the ruling didn't do squat to help the defendants in this case.

No, because it was a purely commericial issue.

The clarification of the court concerns things like leaked documents that trigger a political scandal, which in the past have been successfully taken down on copyright grounds. The court has made it clear that it intends to stop this practice.

It is interesting that the court felt the need to clarify this issue even though it had no bearing on the case at hand.

Explains a lot

[benjfowler]

Might go some way towards explaining the massive right-wing hate for the European Court of Human Rights and petty tabloid hate of 'European human rights' in general.

Human rights and (rightwing politics, elite interests) of all colours generally don't get along.

Re:Explains a lot

[alexgieg]

Human rights and (rightwing politics, elite interests) of all colours generally don't get along.

Sometimes in the effects, but not in the causes.

For example, libertarians are usually all for human rights. What they are against are the "human duties" that come with many of those rights. So, as long as the right is something like "an human has a right to pursue happiness", that's fine. If it says "a man has a right to be happy", and this means someone else having the obligation to make him happy, not so much.

Conservatives, on the other hand, generally aren't agains the rights themselves, but they have serious issues with the hierarchy of said rights. For example, abortion. A conservative (a western one at least) does think a woman should have right over her own body. If he didn't think so he'd be against anti-rape laws, which are entirely based on the right for a women to decide who she lets or doesn't let inside her body. What he doesn't agree with is that said right be placed above a human (fetus or not) right to live. Which in turn they don't think should be placed above the right of society to kill those humans who threaten it the most.

It should be noted too that, from the perspective of many rightwingers, it's the left that doesn't respect many human rights, such as the right to fully express one's own personal beliefs wherever one is just because of one's profession by, for example, forcing one to remove religious symbols from one's work desk or wall.

Gray areas. This theme is full of them.

Re:Explains a lot

[YttriumOxide]

I don't know why, the MAFIAA and artists are generally very left-wing.

Only from a US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, UK) point of view. Remember that "left" from a (mainland) European perspective is generally viewed as significantly further left of "left" from a US perspective. Some policies of the US left are seen as draconianly "right" by many Europeans.

It tends to be the case that in Europe, the word "liberal" still contains the core meaning of the word "liberty". It's definitely a moderated and controlled liberty (so, not "libertarian") but the goal is to promote as much freedom as possible for the greatest number of people.

This is the case whether you agree or disagree with HOW it is done (e.g. higher taxes may seem to be the opposite of "liberty"; but it's viewed in context of using the money to promote the liberty of those who have less without impinging TOO greatly on those who have more, increasing the baseline liberty enjoyed by citizens overall (remembering for an extreme case of the opposite that in a Dictatorship, the Dictator himself has "complete liberty" at the expense of all others; this represents the most possible liberty for one; but the least for the population as a whole. At a lesser scale, the US at present provides a high level of liberty for those of moderate to high income, but less for those that are in the lowest income classes)).

In my understanding, the US left tend to be more in favour of the "war on drugs" than the US right; but the typical European left tends to be against it, with the typical European right being moderately in favour of it.

The biggest problem of course comes from the fact that "left" and "right" are pretty crappy descriptors of politics. Being in favour of higher taxes and a strong social welfare/benefit system really has almost nothing to do with your policies on gun control, which in turn usually has nothing to do with your policy on immigration. I can easily imagine multiple parties all with different platforms on each of these that would never fit in to the neat "left"/"right" divide that is so commonly thrown about.