France’s SPPF sues p2p firms
p2pnet.net news:- “In a ridiculous and grotesque judicial move, made possible by the DADVSI law passed by the UMP government and, above all, by the Vivendi amendment supported by Nicolas Sarkozy (right), the SPPF, which represents independent labels in France, is suing three P2P software vendors.”
So says a post on AllPeers, which has just launched Firefox with AllPeers.
Quoting from Ratiatum, it goes on >>>>>>>>>>
And so it begins! The Vivendi amendment, hotly contested when it was debated in parliament and passed by a whisker by the Joint Committee of the National Assembly and the Senate, has been put to the test by French music labels. They have filed suit against three software vendors: Morpheus, Azureus and Shareaza.
It has to be said that they would have been wrong not to take advantage of this gift given to them by the De Villepin government and Donnedieu de Vabres, a government minister, a gift that was carefully wrapped, so to speak, by then Minister of the Interior and UMP president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The amendment, requested by the eponymous French conglomerate, punishes by three years in prison and a fine of 300,000 euros the publishing of ’software manifestly designed for illicit use.’ Never mind its lack of precision and the insecurity that it subjects software vendors to. Its application in civil law forces publishers of file-sharing software to put in place measures to prevent the downloading of illicit content.
It is on this basis that the Société des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (Society of Phonogram Producers in France) filed suit against three software vendors. They hope to win the right to have the case judged in France and are asking for 20.3 million euros in damages and interest.
The choice of the three applications being targeted is interesting:
Morpheus is a sitting duck that it is just too easy to take pot shots at. Already found guilty in the United States, it is itself seeking 4 billion dollars from eBay but no longer boasts a single user.
Azureus is one of the rare open source programs to have dared to dip its toe in the waters of commerce by providing content publishers with a source of revenues. The publisher of the BitTorrent client has created a VOD platform, Zudeo (now Vuze), in the United States.
Shareaza is an open source multi-platform application that has never had commercial ambitions, has never displayed any advertising and has therefore never earned a single euro of revenue. It is essentially the work of a lone developer. Even today, no ads can be seen on the official website nor in the software itself. It is nonetheless one of the most popular clients for downloading legal content from the Ratiatum download channel.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Firefox with AllPeers – Firefox with AllPeers, June 6, 2007
AllPeers – France: The SPPF Sues Morpheus, Azureus and Shareaza, June 12, 2007
Ratiatum – la SPFF attaque Morpheus, Azureus et Shareaza, June 12, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 12th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Hold it a second. Something is wrong here. Everywhere that I kow of. when a law that prohibits something is approved it can only be enforced for future “illegal” activity that commenced after the law is in effect.
Now, if the law has no grandfather clause that protects old activities, the law must, to be reasonable, have a practical phase out period for would be violators of the new law, something that may no be possible with free software, which once out of the bag, its use cannot be stopped.
Yeah, something wrong here.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Regarding – “Morpheus is a sitting duck that it is just too easy to take pot shots at. Already found guilty in the United States, it is itself seeking 4 billion dollars from eBay but no longer boasts a single user.”
Well at least to the End “No longer boasts a single user” well Morpheus is doing quite well because I get ultrapeers on frostwire more and more with them…