Email from France – 2
p2pnet.net News Opinion:- Our famous star-studded Festival de Cannes is opening May 12 to sad news.
Libération reports that three million French Internet users confess they regularly steal movies and, according to MPAA’s Dan McGreevy, “Piracy on the Internet is increasing more in Europe than anywhere else in the world”.
Well, perhaps we just like movies more than anywhere else in the world. And perhaps we don’t have as much money to spend on movies as everywhere else in the world
But wait! IS it just that we ignore the law and its consequences?
Anyway, the survey cxommissioned by the French Association for Fight against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) also revealed that on an average, for every 11 movies downloaded between the middle of March and the middle of April, only 4.2 were actually watched.
The unanswered question is: of this 4.2, how many would have been actually bought if they hadn’t been downloaded?
Even more to the point, the study reveals that some 44% of downloaded movies are no longer being shown in theatres but aren’t yet available in video rental stores.
In the meanwhile, at an MPAA conference, ALPA’s president Nicolas Seydoux declared, in effect, that file sharers have to understand the fundamental message that “the libertarian kills liberty”.
To re-phrase this, Seydoux says downloading is freeloading and will kill the creativity of the artists who won’t have the money to do what they want to.
Well, here in France we make a distinction between what’s free (non-expensive -gratuit), and what’s free (without limitations – libre).
What the movie and music industries have to remember is:
Even though Hollywood doesn’t understand this distinction, everyone else in the world does.
We want things to be Free, but not necessarily free.
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Guillaume Champeau, who runs Ratiatum.com, p2pnet’s opposite number in France, and p2pnet editor Jon Newton decided there’s so much neat stuff happening that they owe it to their respective readers to trade items every now and then.
Champeau’s first Email from France is here.
May 12th, 2004 at 5:26 pm
“the libertarian kills liberty”???
That is the doubleplustruth if I ever heard it…
And how many times do we have to endure this same tired old lie about the poor artists not getting paid?
“…will kill the creativity of the artists who won’t have the money to do what they want to.”
Like they really care about artists.