Private File Sharing To Remain/Become legal In EU 147
orzetto writes "Italian newspapers are reporting that the European parliament's Commitee for Legal Affairs approved an amendment presented by EMP Nicola Zingaretti (PSE, IT), that makes piracy a felony—but only if a monetary profit is made. As in the EU parliament's press release: 'Members of the Legal Affairs' committee [...] decided that criminal sanctions should only apply to those infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes are therefore also excluded.' The complete proposal was passed with 23 votes in favour, 3 against and 3 abstained, and is intended to be applied to copyright, trademark, design and other IP fields, but not patent right which is explicitly excluded. The proposal has still to pass the vote of the parliament before becoming law in all EU countries, some of which (like Italy) do have criminal laws in place for non-profit file sharing. A note: Most EU countries use civil law, not common law. Translation of legal terms may be misleading."
Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems sensible. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Typo in the headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Still liable for damages in civil suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we've been at that point for a while now. And yet I see there's no shortage of wealthy artists... even if their music sucks.
Re:Seems sensible. (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously. (Score:2, Insightful)
monetary profit. 1. Spending less money than you earn.
2. To avoid spending money by conducting illegal activity.
I don't trust politicians.
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming copyright because you bought a locked phone and a rip protected CD (which I assume to be the case, otherwise you'd just load the ringtone like a normal person) kind of misplaced blame a bit.
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
So? As you correctly point out: the situation is now fundamentally different.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939.
Maybe the right thing is for P2P to be banned. But maybe the right thing is for the content (movies, music, and yes, even software) industry to come up with a business model based on something other than the artificial scarcity imposed by the production costs of selling shiny plastic discs.
Buggy-whip manufacturers probably said the same thing when Henry Ford came out with the automobile. Meanwhile, some guy whose business was making wheels for horse-drawn carriages decided to make stronger wheels that could be bolted onto automobiles.
The war between the users and the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
The interesting thing is... it seems nobody really cares about the artists that AREN'T wealthy.
I'm a classical musician. It's hard to make a living in music when you're purely musical, and not a celebrity figure like most "artists" these days tend to be.
So, the interesting thing about this little feud, to me, is that none of it really deals with the artists themselves. It seems that the RIAA is now seen as Microsoft is often seen (whether or not that's a valid vision of it or not I leave up to your discretion)... we fight it purely out of principle.
But does fighting the RIAA or opening up file sharing and making copyrights pretty much useless actually help the artists at all? I'm a composer... if there were no copyrights whatsoever, and if somebody malicious wanted to steal a work by me (presuming it was even good enough to be worth stolen, of course) and claim it as their own and make money off of it... well, it's rather nice to have laws in place to prevent that. OpenSource Composition doesn't work well. People don't often donate to composers. Copyrights are necessary in a world where people are perfectly happy with stealing other people's music and distributing it. Human nature is easily enticed to take something for free rather than pay for it.
So, what is this whole war between "private" file sharing and the RIAA doing to help the artists, whom, presumably, we all want to protect?
Because there ARE people that will steal [slashdot.org] other people's recordings and do all kinds of things with them; even among musicians, copying sheet music instead of buying it is pretty frequent (and illegal). Because, of course, we all know that all musicians and composers are as famous and rich as Spears or Shore.
People still download obnoxious jingles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Complex Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between France and Germany are indeed many and significant - but that's only two out of 49 European countries. And then there's the rest of the world that inherited the system from their European colonial masters.
To quote the website you referred to: This is in fact wrong and not the whole truth. Far too often the French system is seen as representative for all of Europe - which it is not. In fact European Community law is decided in line with previous verdicts - but with greater freedom of "interpretation" that can lead to new practices.
However in each and every European country domestic law is still practised according to national traditions.