French President Busted For Copyright Violation 317
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has an interesting take on the story of Nicolas Sarkozy being accused of copyright infringement. The irony, of course, is Sarkozy's pushing of a 3-strikes law — disconnecting from the Internet those accused of file sharing — in France and across the EU. The French president had apparently offered to settle the copyright infringement accusation for one Euro, but the band rejected the offer, calling it an insult. The article notes that each year since 2006, a high-profile anti-piracy entity has been on the wrong end of a copyright infringement notice. In 2008, Sony BMG was sued for software piracy. In 2007, anti-piracy outfit BASCAP received a cease and desist order related to pirated software. And in 2006, the MPAA was accused of pirating 'This Film is Not Yet Rated'."
The band in question (Score:5, Interesting)
We have our Sarkozy in Chile, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Chile, the president of the SCD (Society of Author Rights) was caught with pirated software, in a powerpoint lecture about... you guessed it... PIRACY! (they are triying to copy the spanish law, taxing the internet connection for the "lost of revenues")
http://www.elnortero.cl/admin/render/noticia/18164
An our congress try to pass a 3-strikes law for ISPs... with a word document created by a SCD lawyer with a pirated copy of windows ("UE, The Houze"). There are even commemorative t-shirts!
http://url.ie/10xd
http://www.elfrancotirador.cl/2009/01/15/ponte-la-camiseta-con-el-acceso-a-cultura/
There are RIAAs scammers in every country.
Re:Hypocrisy as the norm... (Score:5, Interesting)
These things have *always* happened.
The only difference is that cameras, record-keeping databases, and surveillance have all gotten much better over the last thirty years.
Hell some of the early popes had mistresses.
Power corrupts.
The only real solution is shrinking the amount of power and wealthy any one person can have. And that boat has sailed.
Re:Smart move (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, artists are not all automatically on the side of big media.
you have no idea how right you are.
I have noticed that the 'artists' who produce schlock and hope someone will hand them a paycheck haven't even looked into copyright.
Serious artists who are making a serious effort to comment on contemporary culture are usually very much against copyright. my next show requires a camera to view the images (photographing a painting is a violation, technically).
I know a few bands who encourage people to film their shows, post them to youtube, then they make copyright claims and post ads on that video page. ( no idea how that works out).
they no longer want to be 'picked up my a major'
now, they talk about 'making it somehow without signing...by using teh internets or something...'
i have yet to find a serious artist who supports strict copyright laws. (and I know a lot of artists; being one myself, and associating mainly with other artists, and I work with musicians fairly often.)
Re:FUCK ARTISTS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about capitalism... Pirates are making available a cheaper and often superior (no drm) product. It is our duty as good capitalists to get best value for ourselves.
Re:Do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:He's not directly involved (Score:4, Interesting)
Well again it is not the the UMP party fault either. It's their advertising firm that used this song illegally. And it's this firm that is paying for the song. After all they are paid by a political party to make them looks good to the youngters and used, without permission this song.
Let's be clear here, it's not that old party of old folks that knows about MGMT. It's like Reagan and "Born in U.S.A"'s Springsteen song all over again.
Re:The band in question (Score:3, Interesting)
We see statistics coming out of America like 92% of Americans believe in a God [washingtonpost.com]. This speaks volumes.
Uh... it does?
These anti-American rants that have been showing up on Slashdot in the last few years are making less and less sense.
The CIA World Factbook ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html#People [cia.gov] ) says that France has the following religious distribution:
Roman Catholic 83%-88%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 5%-10%, unaffiliated 4%
So... what negative thing do you get from the US 92% that you don't get from the France 96%?
(To be fair, France doesn't keep official religion statistics, and I haven't seen any surveys asking French people if they believe in a God, but I'm guessing the CIA numbers are pretty accurate.)
Re:FUCK ARTISTS (Score:1, Interesting)
That's probably the most obvious "self-aggrandizing metric which claims to prove your intelligence" that the OP was talking about.
An IQ test is as much a broad measure of intelligence as performance in the 100 metres is of life expectancy.
(Hell, it's even nonsensical to talk about "above average IQ", since there's an inherent self-selection bias in testing. It is absurd to assume that humans are all sufficiently homogeneous that we'll all (i) be equally likely to accept a test; (ii) be equally likely to want to complete the test to the best of our ability. For example, I willingly underperform on the whole range of "intelligence" and "aptitude" tests because I find them to have no purpose: it is thus moral to make their application more difficult. I similarly tackle "personality" tests by imagining a vaguely coherent fictional character and answering as he or she might. But on subject-specific tests I have always tried my utmost to succeed. A naive interpretation would identify me as a first class mathematician with psychopathic tendencies and the wit of a labrador ;-).)