Jail for EU p2p file sharers?
p2pnet.net News:- “Last Tuesday, in committee room A3G-3 of the Altiero Spinelli building of the European Parliament, just across the road from Gare Leopold in Brussels, a group of MEPs and administrators gathered to hear Janelly Fourtou argue that I should be sent to prison,” wrote UK writer and broadcaster Bill Thompson back in 2003.
“Of course, they didn’t mention me by name, but Ms Fourtou, an MEP and the driving force behind the European Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive, wants to make a criminal of anyone who uses peer-to-peer networking software to share unlicensed copies of music, movies and other products of the entertainment industry.”
Because Fourtou is a devotee of Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the the Big 4 Organized Music cartel. She’s also married to former Vivendi boss Jean-René Fourtou and with Nicole Fontaine, she wants people like Thompson thrown into jail.
“Since I’ve got KaZaA on my laptop, and have been known both to download remixes of the White Stripes or old Velvet Underground numbers (please don’t judge me too harshly – it’s my age), and to share the occasional file that might be lying on my hard drive, that means me,” he said in 2003. “It probably means you as well, if you’re a regular internet user who has realised that there is a lot of old music out there that you simply can’t find in record stores, but is easily available over one or other of the P2P networks.”
Fourtou and Fontaine want file sharers to be treated the same way as commercial infringers, says P2P Blog, quoting Heise.de.
“Fontaine and Fourtou introduced several amendments to the second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive that is currently being debated by a committee of the European parliament,” the story says. “Some of them just consist of striking the words ‘on a commercial scale’ out of the original proposal, thus making every act of copyright infringement a criminal offense.
“Others target specific types of copyright infringement. One example: Tourists that bring home counterfeit DVDs from their vacation could be treated the same way as the producers of these products.”
P2P Blog adds that Fourtou and Fontaine, “also want to increase minimum penalties for copyright infringements to fines of at least 600.000 Euro (today, abourt $786,307) for serious cases, with the ability to go to ten times the profit made by the counterfeiter.”
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
back in 2003 – A continent full of criminals, November 7, 2003
P2P Blog – EU wants to criminalize file sharing, January 3, 2007
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January 4th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
if THEY ™ want to paint us as such extreme criminals, maybe it is time that we act like hardcore criminals?
These MAFIAA cartels with peoples like Mr. Fourtou and his (imho ugly looking) wife are reminding me day by day even more of the SCC!
Rember what will have/have had happen to them according to different revisions of the guide!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation
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kdsde
January 4th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
so would this be a white collar crime like say a CEO stealling money from a company?
January 4th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
that’s not a crime. that’s normal practise. she’s thinking of something serious like sharing music
January 4th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I’m a “fan” of P2Pnet and a regular reader/poster. This particular story does seem a bit impertinent as it is referring to BP events of 2003. The story does mention it, but IMHO it still seems like obsolete information.
just sayin’