Email from France – 9
p2pnet.net News Feature:- Justice is said to be blind and from what we’ve seen here in France, recently, we tend to believe it.
France’s principal music distributor, also a member of Big Four record label cartel, has been indicted because buyers of its CDs weren’t able to play them.
"The FNAC and the major EMI France have been indicted by Justice Alain Philibeaux for deception over substiantial qualities of CDs, because they sold audio CDs equiped with anti-copy systems (Copy Control)", says French economics newspaper Les Echos.
Indeed, the technical characteristics of Compact Discs were included in the Red Book in 1980 by its promoters Philips and Sony.
By implementing anti-copy measures, the Big Four fail to adhere to CD specifications – and this should be made clear to the general public.
The problem came to light when the French fraud authorities received a number of complaints from buyers saying they weren’t able to play their CDs on car radios, computers or even on hi-fi equipment.
"The two companies targeted by the justice face up to a 187,500 euros (close to $276,000) in damages, and a complementary penalty that could lead to calling every incrimated CD off", the newspaper warns.
However, this case doesn’t deal directly with private copying right or, should we say, with a ban on private copying.
In Europe as well as in Canada, and to some extent in the US, the public has the right to make copies of works for their personal use.
This right has been deeply violated by copy-control systems and we’re looking forward to sentences for the Big Four labels and their distributors.
Action has also been taken in Belgium against EMI, Sony, BMG and Universal (where’s Warner?), and France could also indict BMG for using SunnComm’s MediaMax copy-protection system.
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Guillaume Champeau, who runs Ratiatum.com, p2pnet’s opposite number in France, and p2pnet editor Jon Newton, decided they owe it to their respective readers to trade items.
Champeau Emails from France: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
A new Ratiatum and p2pnet collaboration will be announced when p2pnet changes its look in the very near future.
Stay tuned.
August 27th, 2004 at 3:33 am
AMEN!
Perhaps a victory here will set a precedent that others will follow. It’s abhorrent that companies put in measures to make it impossible to back up your own PURCHASED data.