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."

Early Days

[MCSEBear]

The music industry is very used to getting their way. They have plenty of money to give to politicians when they aren't giving it to radio stations in illegal pay for play schemes. Give them a while and they will bribe the bad news away...

Private Copying

[Microlith]

That's the most public form of the word "private" I've ever seen.

Somehow I doubt copying is truly "private" if it involves people you don't know, who could possibly number in the thousands or more...

Re:who knew?

[KaushalParekh]

refresh your history.. France has always been the country to stick up for rights.

Re:Not Sure If I Agree

[kiracatgirl]

It means private as in non-commercial, not as in kept hidden from the rest of the world.

Re:Early Days

[theJML]

"The music industry is very used to getting their way. They have plenty of money to give to politicians when they aren't giving it to radio stations in illegal pay for play schemes. Give them a while and they will bribe the bad news away..."

Because God Forbid the music industry actually gives any of that money to the people that write/play/record/produce/create the music that makes them an industry. I figure the artists should actually see some of the money instead of it being spent on lawsuits and red-tape.

I mean, that's like winning the $100M lottery and only getting $5 out of it because someone decided that they'd use the rest of the money to sue other people to make sure someone doesn't steal my $5.

I guess I just don't see how the RIAA isn't a wholy owned subsidiary of the Mafia.

TFA...

[nordelius]

... would be worth a look. This should be seen in context with a French initiative to tax access to P2P networks.

What they seem to be looking at is accepting that people are going to use P2P networks anyway, and look at implementing some kind of revenue model to ensure that music publishers don't get so antsy in france that they sue dead people who have never used a computer.

"But," I hear you cry, "what's to stop me using Brand X esoteric open source P2P software?". Well, if you are using and not paying, you are now committing an offence against the state.

Which makes it a damn sight easier to get your arse put in prison.

Cunning.

Re:who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must explain the WWII stuff and all.

Like why France was the first country to declare war on the Nazis in Sept '39 while the US just sat on their hands?

Re:who knew?

[Spy der Mann]

Who knew france would be the country to stick up for digital copy rights?

Well, they opposed Bush in his "omg teh terroristz lets bomb iraq!" madness.

Re:France surrenders to the War on P2P

[ThinWhiteDuke]

I would have thought, in this specific occurrence, that it is the US who surrendered to big business.

But I'm just French. And not even Republican. What do I know about spinning news?

Re:who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

You did so much better in securing the liberties of Vietnam .. oh that's right , you got your Ass kicked , you didn't surrender you ran away .
George Washington also surrendered to the French once .

So does this mean ..

[bizitch]

... we can route all our P2P traffic via proxy/router thru France in order to be immune from prosecution/lawsuits? - sweet!

Re:who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only those who went to war against the Nazis while they were strong should comment here.

Kill stealers who waited for the Russians to do the hard work before daring to backstab a broken foe deserve no respect.

Re:who knew?

[weierstrass]

>The vietnam war was a battle between N and S.

hahahahahaha.

you must be american. is that what they teach you in primary school nowadays?

Re:who knew?

[Rei]

Yeah, because good relations with Iraq was much more important than good relations with the US, which they traded with twenty times as much, and who would (explicitly admitted) have granted them reconstruction deals had they taken part in the invasion. What great logic there. Sure, it had absolutely nothing to do with three in four French citizens opposing the war. Heaven forbid a democracy listen to its population!

Re:who knew?

[mOdQuArK!]

Bah, France along with Germany and Russia opposed the war because it would interrupt their nice oil deals with Iraq.

The _companies_ of those countries might've opposed the war because of that.

The _citizens_ of those countries opposed it because they thought, like most of the world, that the Bush Administration was lying through their *ssholes about the necessity for going into Iraq.

Unfortunately, half of the U.S. public seems to be in a state of willful denial, otherwise he & his cronies would have been impeached and thrown into prison by now.

Re:who knew?

[xarak]

France is going to be the country to revolutionize P2P and digital copyrights in general, and you still sit there and whine about them?

Re:who knew?

[db32]

Uhm before you get too excited about French aid in the American Revolution you should examine the motivating factors. They weren't exactly champions of freedom, they just really didn't like the British, and taking America away from the British would weaken them considerably. It was in their best interest for the revolutionaries to win that fight, but not wanting to get in the mix directly and make life a little more difficult, they just supported us. This is sorta the same way we supported various countries and "freedom fighters" against those evil commies. We wanted to communists weakend, but didn't want to risk a direct conflict, so we just help out the little guy who doesn't have much to lose by fighting.

Re:who knew?

[db32]

Certainly. It isn't terribly difficult to believe that the populace thinks and acts differently than their leaders. Look at the current state of affairs with any number of issues right now. I think it is a little funny how everyone condemns Americans as all being the same, and then screams bloody murder when Americans do the same to them. I view a great deal of it like religion. The People, like God, are good on the whole, but both have some pretty crappy representitives. I'm not pro or anti France, I just dislike seeing both sides of the "Country X is always good/evil", it is always so one sided and rarely accepts the fact that their favorite country has done both good and evil things, and are rarely motivated by simply wanting to do good or evil.

Re:Early Days

[Just Some Guy]

I guess I just don't see how the RIAA isn't a wholy owned subsidiary of the Mafia.

That's really not fair. You're comparing a group of terroristic thugs who sell protection rackets and shady distribution channels with a group of Italian-American businessmen. When was the last time you heard of the mafia putting the beatdown on a single mom, or an old lady with no telephone who lives with a bunch of cats?

No, I'd much rather pay the mafia than the RIAA; the odds are a lot better of actually getting something for your money.

Re:Private?

[swilver]

But the fact is, the world doesn't download it. There's only so much bandwidth, so in the end a few *private* individuals will actually download it from you directly (and in most cases only part of it).

The industry would like you to believe that YOU, in making a file available for download, are the SOLE person responsible for every copy downloaded everywhere, not just from you.

The fact of the matter is, a single individual doesn't have the resources to make a file available for everyone, it takes a lot of individuals to make a file public.

However, I see where this makes a good business model, as you could sue everyone that made a copy available for the entire sum of damages...

Re:who knew?

[typidemon]

The Soviet Union pretty much collapsed all by itself.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[interactive_civilian]

Rei said:

Yeah, because good relations with Iraq was much more important than good relations with the US, which they traded with twenty times as much, and who would (explicitly admitted) have granted them reconstruction deals had they taken part in the invasion.

WTF? So the US says, "Hey, we're gonna go totally destroy this country. Wanna come along and help and then make money rebuilding it? Don't worry...we're sure not too many of your soldiers will die, and we've gotten much better about friendly fire." And you think France should have said, "Oh, yeah. We're in. After all, it is only brown sand people."

Asking a country to participate in war (that was started on false premises) because they can profit from it is one of the more disgusting things I have ever heard.

I would say that good relations with Iraq, not to mention not killing thousands of innocent people, is much more important than slaughtering people and destroying countries for money.