Free P2P In France?

cyberbian writes to tell us that earlier in the week the French Parliament voted to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet. This ruling puts them in direct conflict with both the Media companies and the rest of the French government. From the article: " If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes, a French group that defends people accused of improperly sharing music files. The law would be a blow to media companies that increasingly use the courts worldwide to sue people for downloading or sharing music and movie files. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.'s Fox say free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year."

How very ironic!

[Anonymous Coward]

This was the DADVSI bill that was supposed to turn free software into crime.

You have to admire an independent parliament!

Re:What about Canada?

[eMartin]

Sorry pasted the wrong bit into the link.

http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5182641.html [com.com]

Re:What about Canada?

[JonN]

Oeer-to-peer is only partially legal in Canada. The government has deemed that downloading music in Canada is perfectly legal, as it is for personal use. However the issue lies in uploading music, which is illegal. More information in this article [com.com]

Re:5 billion lost?! Oh no!

[JonN]

While it is true that the majority of heavy p2p users would never purchase everything that they have downloaded, think beyond the magnitude. I know personally there are many CDs which I have not bought, because I could download them. If I couldn't download them, then I would have purchased them because I enjoy the music.

Also, before any flame, I live in Canada so it is perfectly legal :)

So stop withholding the product

[mikeswi]

"...free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year."

Poor babies. If they don't want me downloading movies before they are released to DVD (officially), then they need to release the damn things sooner.

I buy a lot of DVDs. I have a small shelf, four levels, full of DVDs, with a box filled with more DVDs right next to it. I despise movie theaters. I'm not going to one, except in very rare cases. But I will see the movie, regardless.

I can't wait for that company Morgan Freeman has founded to start operating. Downloads of movies released at the same time they are released to the theaters.

The MPAA and RIAA needs to accept the fact that they cannot ignore the internet or the consumer. They don't want to work with the internet, because they fear piracy. So either they won't release anything on the internet or they wrap it in obnoxious DRM and at low quality. And in doing that, they are directly responsible for most of the file trading. If the INDUCE Act ever becomes law, they will be its biggest offenders.

Re:It's more about global licence

[aaribaud]

Debates might well end on jan 17, what with the government being in such a hurry that they formally declared urgency on passing this law. And while they're agreeing on creating a committee to study the problem, such a committee would be entirely on their side to boot.

However, there is a sligh chance that things turn out not so bad (1) if proponents of free software and of personal use voice their concern loud enough before jan 17, and chances still if they don't give up after jan 17.

(for the French ppl out there, I've started a french-language journal on users' rights (as opposed to authors' or publishers' rights). I won't publish its URL here because i) this might lead to ./ing, which would hurt my website provider, and ii) this might lead to absolutely no hit increase, which would hurt my heart, si just send me an e-mail if you want the URL.

Albert.

(1) considering that the current amendments do not legalize P2P at all (only downloading) and that many others hurt personal use rights (copying your own paid DVDs for your own private use would be counterfeiting) as well as free software use (reading your own paid DVDs with VLC / Mplayer / whatever is available as source code would be counterfeiting as well).

Economic shot across the bow...

[xoip]

France loves American culture but wants to preserve their own. By alowing free access, it takes money out of the pockets of the large media interests and makes it less likely that they will be subjected to American films and save themselves the agony of bad translations.

Please let change happen

[grumpygrodyguy]

The free sharing of resources and pooling of indexed harddisks, what a tragedy.

The grandest vision of the early ftp/http devs has come to pass, and now everyone wants to put the ship back in the bottle. Screw all of you naysayers, this is what the internet was for...the free sharing of information.

I'm sorry so many of you think abundance is such a threat to your livelyhood.

Maybe you should back politcal change in the form of progressive solutions instead of trying to cram decades of legacy materialistic thinking down the proverbial throats of your children's future.

Re:5 billion lost?! Oh no!

[mrscorpio]

If you live in Canada then you already HAVE purchased them, in the form of the taxes you pay on all media.

I'd be on P2P 24/7 if I lived in Canada for this reason.

c'est pas encore gagn'e...

[tetabiate]

Mr. Donnedieu persiste...

http://news.tf1.fr/news/multimedia/0,,3275091,00.h tml [tf1.fr]

Re:A tax is worse than a ban...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in France a couple of weeks ago and saw some fruit stands in Paris that worked based on customers' honesty. The fruit were in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk, you picked whatever you wanted and stepped into the store to pay. Are French people so honest that they will always pay the price?

Yes, we are. I'm amused it seems so unbelievable to you.

Re:So stop withholding the product

[cliffski]

Well said. You can see this in work with examples such as video games and applications that have freely available demos. There is a freely downloadable demo of civ4 for example, so the people downloading it from p2p have absolutely sod all excuse or justification. What they are doing is basically a big 'fuck you' to all the people who worked hard to make that game.
At least have the guts to admit what you are doing if you download something rather than buy it.
Movies, songs, games, and software arent food or shelter. Nobody has a human rights claim to be supplied with the latest copy of photoshop without paying for it.
When a game has a free demo, no DRM and is ressonably priced, I can't see any justification for copying it freely.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Has the city of Paris really copyrighted the Eiffel Tower as it looks lit up at night, meaning that anyone (including a tourist) who takes a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night has to get permission and pay a fee before publishing that picture? As bizarre as it sounds, apparently this is true. Even if you wanted to post your holiday photos of the 'Eiffel Tower by night' on the web, you would technically have to get permission first. The Eiffel Tower itself was built in 1889, and therefore its likeness entered the public domain long ago, but the Parisian authorities sneaked around this fact by copyrighting the lights on the Tower. They did this in 2003. That's why the copyright issue only applies to the Eiffel Tower at night. So technically it's not the tower itself that is copyrighted. It's the lights on the tower. But you can hardly photograph the tower without getting the lights. This is the kind of thing that sounds so stupid you suspect it has to be false, but David-Michel Davies who's written about this over at FastCompany http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/02/02/ei ffel_tower_repossessed.html [fastcompany.com] appears to have done his homework, so I'm inclined to believe him. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments /2417/ [museumofhoaxes.com]

Re:A tax is worse than a ban...

[Suhas]

> I was in France a couple of weeks ago and saw some fruit stands in Paris that worked based on customers' honesty. The fruit were in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk, you picked whatever you wanted and stepped into the store to pay. Are French people so honest that they will always pay the price? I don't think so.

You must be an american. I find it extremely funny that this is surprising for you. I don't know about france but this is the de-facto way of selling for all types of stores in Japan. Not just fruits and vegetables, but cosmetics, toys, books, CD's etc. as well. Yes, people ARE that honest in other parts of the world. Why, in a Tokyo suburb called kokobunji, I have first hand seen unmanned fruit stalls on hiking trails where you pick what you want and drop the money in a cardboard box.

Re:not funny

[Jim_Callahan]

Just for the record, 'French' is not a race. There are five or six races that comprise the white population alone there. It's a nationality.
 
Oh, 'Canadian' isn't a race, either.