Legal Victory for P2P in France

nietsch writes "The Register is reporting that a french Kazaa user that had been sued by the SCPP (the french equivalent of the RIAA) has been acquitted by the courts in his county. 'The Judges decided that these acts of downloading and uploading qualified as private copying' Ars Technica has more coverage on the subject, or you can read it in english from the organization that lead the defense."

Re:Not Sure If I Agree

[Yvanhoe]

This is old news.
The act of downloading is considered fair game but the act of uploading without the correct licence is still illegal.
you also have to know that in France there is a "tax on the private copy". When you buy a blank CD or DVD, you pay a tax that goes directly in the SCPP's pocket. The judge recognized that by burning most of the downloaded stuff, this particular person was in fact paying for his stuff and denied his responsability.

BTW, isn't it a last year news ?

On a side note, French parliament is currently examining a law that would legalize a "P2P fee", legalizing 100% of P2P downloadable stuff. Its chances to pass are thin, but there is currently a heated debate (most politician think about the 2007 presidential elections)

They are changing the law now

[antonallan]

This latest verdict is probably in line with the current French legislation. But since France is a member of EU, they will eventually have to implement the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD). The French parlament are in fact discussing this, the proposed french law is called "Droit d'Auteur et aux Droits Voisins dans la Société de l'Information" (DADVSI), and though opposition is tough it will certainly come to life soon, as all EU directives must in all member states.

Then P2P networks and the use of them, even to share innocent files, will be illegal. This law will also affect Open Source software development, so it might matter more than you think.

You can help the French community by signing a petition here:

http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers [eucd.info]

Re:Uh. Not quite.

[ant-1]

We do have precedent. It's called "jurisprudence", and although a judge is not legally bound to apply the same judgment twice for two similar cases, it is was is done in the courts.
And when the judge deviates (because the precedent is obsolete for example), he better have good reasonning wrapped around its verdict, because higher courts will break the judgment if not.

Re:Private Copying

[Kjella]

Probably, but private has many meanings. private 4 c) [answers.com] Conducted and supported primarily by individuals or groups not affiliated with governmental agencies or corporations: a private college; a private sanatorium. In that context private P2P is correct even if it is open to everyone.

Re:who knew?

[FidelCatsro]

The French did not Surrender , the French government did .
France had some of the best organised Resistance movements in the War .the D-Day landings would likely have been a lot harder had it not been for the French Resistance .

French Aristocracy and rulers have a habit of Bending over , The French People have a habit of Kicking them up the arse when they do .

Cocorico !

[Matlo]

I think this decision is fair. You guys have to be aware that french people pay a special tax when they buy blank CDs. Where does it go? Into the SACEM's (~RIAA) pockets. So anyone buying CD-R/CD-RW is already paying for the right to make copies. And if you use the CD-R to make a backup of your documents (yes, I know, who does that?), you basically paid the tax for nothing. So let's download citoyens !
I think also the distinction between private and public is in the money. If you download for your personal use, and do not make money out of it, you're good. But if you burn the downloaded music and sell the CD, you're evil! Actually, making money and being evil are very strongly connected in France. Darn capitalists!

Re:who knew?

[masklinn]

Big deal, how many times did Napoleon try to conquer Russia?

Once, winter won after Napoleon burned most of Moscow to the ground.

Only download is private copy

[alain_f]

The judge only decided that download can be seen as private copy. Several other decisions in France go in the same direction. According to the current law, private copy cannot be prohibited by the copyright holders as long as the copy is intended to be used by the guy making the copy. It means you can rip a CD, put the MP3s on a website with restriced access and send a link to this website to your friends, but not directly send the MP3s by mail (because in this cause, you would be the one who create the copy to be used by someone else). In France, there is a non-negligible tax on writable CDs, on Flash memory, on hard drives which goes directly to the music/movie industries, as a compensation for private copy. What is new in this decision is about upload. But this is not related to the private copy so-called exception. The arguments are: (1) the guy only put files in a shared directory, he had no control on whether the files would be downloaded or not; (2) actually, the software did not even allow the guy to distinguish between files protected by copyright and other materials; (3) one cannot assume by default that the guy wanted to cheat. For those who read french: http://www.juriscom.net/jpt/visu.php?ID=785 [juriscom.net]

Re:That's a pretty shaky defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Publishing house B buys one copy, and openly makes it downloadable without charge, in order to reduce the sales of publishing house A.

That would qualify as indirect commercial gain.

Is Paris P2P Paradise?

[soupdevil]

It's interesting that France, home of almost-legal p2p for copyrighted files, is also the center of activity for Jamendo [jamendo.com], which is one of the most interesting and innovative, non-controversial ways to use peer file sharing software. It's a music sharing website, but all artists release their music under Creative Commons licenses, and you can download albums on eMule or BitTorrent networks, which saves Jamendo on bandwidth.

I would have assumed that encouraging legal downloading of mainstream, copyrighted files would have discouraged the growth of shared, open alternatives. But the opposite seems to be true.

Re:who knew?

[Kierthos]

You mean, after Moscow (which wasn't really the capital of Russia at the time; St. Petersburg was) had been stripped of pretty much all supplies by the Russians, and was possibly set on fire by the Russians so as not to provide shelter either? Oh, and let's not forget the asylum inmates that were turned out on the streets by the Russians.

It wasn't just the winter that did Napoleon's "Grand Army" in.

Kierthos

Re:Not Sure If I Agree

[dosquatch]

in France there is a "tax on the private copy". When you buy a blank CD or DVD, you pay a tax that goes directly in the SCPP's pocket.

And in the US we have the "DAT tax" [brouhaha.com], which was extended to cover blank cassettes, Blank VHS tapes, and music (not data) CD-R [wikipedia.org]. This is a royalty that goes to the labels, artists, producers, etc. regardless of what you record on the blank media, was lobbied for by the MPAA/RIAA, and is meant to ensure that IP owners get paid for at-home copying. So we're good to go, right?

Re:who knew?

[Lauwenmark]

[i]The French support we enjoyed during the revolution was critical. It was not, however, in any way comparable to the support they enjoyed during WW2.[/i] Well, did you ever wondered where the Insurgents got most of their military equipment from ? Who provided the maritime support required ? Who provided the basical military instruction needed that lacked to the army of Washington ? That's much more than the "moral support" you were talking about. Actually, most of the guns used by the Insurgents were provided by the French (One of the most active being the famous writer Beaumarchais). In both wars, the support was actually comparable, and had the same critical impact on the result. The only difference is its absolute scale - but let's not forget that the US Independence War was lead nearly two centuries before WW2, and on a much more limited area, hence the difference in raw numbers.

Re:Early Days

[anotherzeb]

See the success of the British band the Arctic Monkeys to see how true this is for a lot of people - their original fan base was formed by word of mouth and grew so large that when they released their first album recently it became the fastest selling album in Britain so far

To be precise

[Anonymous Coward]

the judgment ( http://www.juriscom.net/jpt/visu.php?ID=785 [juriscom.net] ) does not authorize uploading nor does it say that uploading is considered private copying.

The judges took the decision to acquit him because :

- The guy could legitimately claim he didn't know he was sharing copyrighted stuff (he could have shared a whole folder and then incidentally placed copyrighted files in it).

- He had no means to formally tell that one file or another was under copyright (in fact only 1212 of the 1875 tunes he shared were).

- As has already been said, there's a tax on blank media that was precisely designed to compensate for such damage.