There is fact two different Courts in France.

One is for “Civil Law” with many layers and the other the “Penal/Criminal Law” for serious charges (thief, murder, rape, etc.)

It’s mandatory by Law, in the second case, that no names will be ever release by the medias (in order to get the info, you’ll have to get an appointment face to face with some guy at the Court. Even then, only a reading will be made to U : no copy.)

@ Blog

Yes you are right. In order to get some money from publication (Civil Law) you either have to have a business registered as “Legal Publisher” or in case for a newspaper to mention it all under a special page : “Legal Notices”

I think in this first ever case in France ! the Court and Numerama didn’t see it coming when obliging Majors request to go to any Web site of their choice.

Two infringements at once !

The printing press has predefined spaces and pages for publicity. Those are the spaces that are used not only for publicity, but also when an identity wants (or is forced to) to make a public announcement (open letters, openning of govement contracts, etc).

Those are the same spaces that I think the court was refering to(ignorance over new tech), because I don’t see a French court having ANY power over ANY press identity to force them to use an article space to release anything. The only exception might be if that particular press identity loses a trial and is told by the court to issue a public apology to the winning party or retract of a story (wish in most cases goes in the editorial page).

No, matter of space is not an issue – you may find “paying” websites in France which will gladly display it all.

But they [Numerama] can go to court arguing that the media chosen to be reproduced to deliver the verdicts on their website is mentionning names, adresses, job, etc.

That is against the Law !

Article 7 on Computing & Privacy Rights in French Law … so rightly so that French Gvt Websites respect that Law.

Obviously, as I wrote just before, Numerama is heading the wrong tracks.

Possibly there’s a chance that Numerama can go to court against the state(and win) by showing that as the medium isn’t the same as printing press, there’s no advertisement/announcement space, therefore they cannot comply with the court order.

I don’t know the French law, but what I mentined it’s logical in a democratic judicial system.

Redistribute ? why not .. I think Numerama got all the names, adresses and the amount of each fine (so to give a proportionnal check). Hum … just making fun out of Numerama.

The outraging thing is Numerama telling this story on its website as “The majors are handing us out 10 000″ !!!

What a way handy way from Numerama to cover their own shit !

The worst country EVER!

The effect will be very very different!

Donate this to the pirate bay!

Or the did this intentionaly against the copyright extremists?

Theses judges are MORONS to the power of 10 and all upercases!!

Idiot.

If an agency of government FORCES YOU to publish information against your will, because if you don’t make it then you will get punishment; then, according to your nonsense logic, there were not fundamental rights violated.

You definitely are a lunatic, if you believe all this nonsense.

In this case, the court has decided that it was appropriate to publish its decisions on Numerama. It has nothing to do with censorship, and the gouvernment has no right to tell what a website is allowed to publish or not. Besides, Numerama got a financial counterpart for this.

As strange as it looks like, everything’s fine in this case.

In fact they are just asking for some ad space to show people that you risk prosecutions if you do that. Sort of an ad for the law.

Not. This is not normal and I don’t know of a “lots of countries do it”.
In fact, I live in a country of South America, and my government doesn’t force to web sites hosted here to publish Nazi media propaganda or any other information that could violate the beliefs and desires of their owners.

And you know that South America is a lot more corrupt than Europe, in a general term; and I (as latin) will hope that France could be a lot better than my country in the defense of basic human rights, but this seems not being the case… Shame on you, France!!!

Another thing… You define “crime” in this specific case…

That I know; there doesn’t exist any law against the free exchange of information and culture with others with non-commercial intentions, by any medium, physical or digital; and I challenge anyone here to prove otherwise.

but they are scared croissants, trying to spin it in their favor

the court can publish their stuff somewhere else

oh, but they must do it :horror: – ever heard of civil disobedience?

laws aren’t cast in stone, laws aren’t dogmas, whenever a serious problem arises laws are redefined

*Schikse = ‘non-Jewish girl’ tifle ‘church’ chonte ‘prostitute’.

have u ever heard of human instincts ?
from that point the entertainment industry produces thiefs among common people, which people dislike so they pretend it sharing or something.
It’s like scattering ecstasy over the city’s central square, then sue everyone who picked up too much, for distribution

May I ask you what redefinition of the word ‘theft’ has been applied in your opnion? As far as I am aware, that word has always meant that something is wrongfully taken away from its owner. You’d have to strecht that very far even to find an analogy in the context of data. ‘Digital theft’ would have to mean an action in which data is not only copied, but the original is also destroyed. As far as I know, that’s not common practice and it isn’t compatible with the idea of file sharing.

‘The fact is that piracy is depriving copyright holders of their profits ‘

Well, if this is a fact, would you then be so kind to explain how exactily piracy does this? Most file sharers have a collection vastly outnumbering what they could have afforded if they wouldn’t have access to new distribution systems. However, that doesn’t stop them from buying media. In fact, the people that people that download a lot of media usually also buy a lot and tend to visit concerts, performances and cinemas more often. You seem to think that somehow people are only or mostly downloading stuff they would have otherwise bought. This is complete and utter nonsense. People are spending more than ever on media and there is no reason to assume that not having access to file sharing would have magically provided them with additional income to buy even more media.

People have been copying music for decades, be it on various types of tape, on CD-R or on hard disk drives. Even though this has always happened on a significant scale, the media industry didn’t protest very much until a new distribution channel started to arise. They don’t seriously believe file sharing has ever lost them a significant amount of revenue, but they justly fear that their effective monopoly on distribution is at stake. For a company that is used to having a monopoly on every product it sells on a product with negligiable marginal cost, this is a serious threat to their business model.

I am getting more and more annoyed with people defending copyright as if it were some inherent right. Copyright is a device that curtails the public freedom by granting a monopoly on copying some piece of data for a limited amount of time, in order to make it easier for writers and musicians to earn a living. It is not an inherent right, but a policy tool that was quite controversial when it was introduced. As most situations that involve a commercial monopoly within a capitalistic market, this doesn’t work. Copyright should have been abolished years ago.

This is completely normal, lots of coountries do it, including the UK for certain crimes.

The difference in this case is that nobody cares they committed this “crime”. Or they consider the guy to be a hero.

The only thing these people did wrong was not to use PeerGuardian or a proxy server.

French people normally don’t put up with nonsense from the government, I am sure they are

This action could open up a conflict of interests concerning the violation of the convicted’s human rights concerning the full publication of the their contact details on a global information network system which could have lasting consequences upon their lives.

Futher it suggests the arrival of a new era of many varied extremes of individual National Government policy towards policing file sharing. The same week as this french news story breaks, the Uk’s BBC announce a more liberal license funding package to set up a national email and letter warning system for those suspected of internet illegal file sharing but rejects punishment by internet disconnection in favour of lowering bandwidth and connection speeds for persistant offenders who have been warned.

It’s not legal :(

I’m French, and it seems you need some infos about how “justice” works in my country.

Yes, agree with you, the Justice system can be mysterious for a non French.

We have a law telling that Justice decisions can be forced to be published in newspapers or any others informations media (in this case, a website) if the complainer decide to.

Media have no rights to refuse these publication, but they’re indemnify by the complainer for the ad space losted.
So, Numerama is not guilty, it’s just legal in French laws, that’s all.

Is it a bad or good law ?
This is not the matter here.

The only interesting info is :
Numerama gives informations to their readers, and ask them what to do with the cash.

It’s now our work to find the greatest idea on how to use well this money.

What about preparing a riot ? …

What do you know about these cases? For all we know, these peoples may have been making profits with piracy …