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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.'"
I, for one, welcome our new european overlords!
There's something you owe the french.
Your freedom.
And most of your constitution.
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.
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.
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