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Why do the French have such a hard-on for copyright enforcement? (Honest question)
by solstice 8y ago
Why do the French have such a hard-on for copyright enforcement? (Honest question)
- ams6110 8y agoI guess because it's the law, and governments are supposed to enforce the law.
- anoncake 8y agoThats not a special property of France though.
- cheeze 8y agoWhy doesn't France care as much about other laws?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- atomi 8y agoPeople write laws. They're generally lobbied for.
- ptaipale 8y agoI'm slightly baffled by the difference, though, as some other laws are not enforced. For instance, the case where directors of a tyre manufacturer were forcibly taken hostage and physically abused by the workers. Normally, you'd send in the police, arrest hostage-takers and give them long imprisonment.
- vkou 8y agoJust like when your employer commits wage theft, you call the police, they drive over, taze your boss, put him in handcuffs, and book him? After all, that's what I would expect should happen to a regular thief. Do you also expect that industrial executives, managers, and everyone down to the line workers get booked on terrorism charges, for poisoning our water supplies, if they are caught illegally polluting?
- kmlx 8y ago"Do you also expect that industrial executives, managers, and everyone down to the line workers get booked on terrorism charges, for poisoning our water supplies, if they are caught illegally polluting?" Not the original poster, but Yes, of course. Who doesn't expect that?
- vkou 8y ago> Who doesn't expect that? People who have any experience with how the real world works. At best, the company may get a token fine, with the people giving the orders, and carrying them out never getting held accountable. At worst, much hooing and hawwing is had about how important <the industry> is, and how <the company> pinky swears that it will never do what they did again.
- kmlx 8y agojust because reality is ruined at the moment doesn't mean i shouldn't expect the law to work. plus, we get CEOs sent to jail all the time, so it's not like there's no precedent.
- petre 8y agoThey have very big and powerful unions that could call for a general strike and paralyse the country. So rather than sending SWAT teams to shoot people, they negotiate.
- alexis_fr 8y agoYes, that was appalling. I guess the directors were expecting the SWAT/GIGN to come, but hours passed and they had to sign documents, and the signature was deemed valid. I don’t even know if the directors were fed or could gonto the bathrooms during that hostage situation. Torture at its best.
- seszett 8y agoYou don't have to look very hard to find better examples of "torture" than being kept for a whole day within an office (with access to the bathrooms obviously, nobody was forced to pee in their pants).
- alexis_fr 8y agoA whole week, if I remember. Then again, when it’s not enforced and when you know how violent union people can be, you don’t know how long you’ll stay there, and if you will get out alive at all. You only know when it’s over. What I’m furious about is that the signature should have been considered under duress. It was not.
- seszett 8y agoYou're implying that the hostage takers where not arrested or given imprisonment, but in the case of the Goodyear employees they were arrested and sentenced to 24 months imprisonment (15 months suspended). That's what the victim party had asked for too, so I don't understand what problem there is with this judgment?
- ptaipale 8y agoThanks - I did not know that. The hostage-taking did make headlines internationally, any subsequent trial less so.
- cheeze 8y agoSame reason as Germany: a large copyright lobby.
- baby 8y agoit's really not as bad as Germany though.
- petre 8y agoIn Germany they still go after you if you get caught downloading torrents. The French had a three strike rule but I think they've done away with it and went after pirated content providers instead. Which is why we probably have article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive now.
- gloflo 8y agos/downloading/uploading
- nraynaud 8y agoI think a bit less than the US, because we don't have Disney or Hollywood in general, but it's still pretty high.
- pkaye 8y agoWasnt the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" which extended copyright in the US was to harmonize with the copyright extensions in the EU? And "Unlike copyright extension legislation in the European Union, the Sonny Bono Act did not revive copyrights that had already expired." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- nraynaud 8y agoI know some copyright stuff in Europe has been under influence of American companies. And also when the EU tried to reclaim the name of some cheeses and wines, there was some horse trading with the movie industrie.
- Someone1234 8y agoThe French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. So I'd argue that the French have a love-affair with traditional publishing, and traditional publishing loves draconian copyright rules. The whole thing is almost a culture war for the French people's soul by-proxy.
- dunefox 8y ago> The French really love their language Well, someone has to.
- Simple_Guy 8y agoso pride is killing their ability to access information. In this case I have no pity for them, then. If they want to feel better about themselves by cutting off their own ears because other people are using English then let them.
- bchanudet 8y agoFrance has one of the best copyright protection laws that I know, but unfortunately that has to go both ways (no that I agree with the ruling). Now please don't consider this ruling as one made by the actual researchers, especially the younger ones that had a decent English education and sees no problem using English material.
- enriquto 8y ago> The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. Most french researchers are perfectly happy using these sites, and dislike strongly the draconian schemes of scientific journal publishers (which publish texts mostly in english). Several people are pushing for french university libraries to stop paying subscriptions to journals and give all that money directly to scihub. Yet, these initiatives are always blocked at higher levels.
- marmaduke 8y agoI think it's fair to say in France that something will "strictly forbidden" (formellement interdit) and by and large ignored, except when a real problem arises or an example is to be made.
- good_guy 8y agoFollow the money, it's the answer to most of these kind of questions.
- jaabe 8y agoMost of Western Europe does. With most of our production having moved to other countries, we rely on our ability to produce and own intellectual property. Without strong copyrights we would have nothing to trade.
- boudin 8y agoI don't think it's specific to France. UK has random torrent websites banned the same way. Some regulation comes from EU, which has then been implemented by countries in EU: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive Publishers used the existing laws to get this ban, as they already did in other countries. I wouldn't be surprised they've started some similar actions in other countries and will end up with similar results. Honestly, almost every country has copyright laws, so allow this kind of lawsuit.
- david_p 8y agoFrench here. My understanding is that we have a nationally powerful publishing industry (books, movies, music), thus a powerful pro-copyright lobby.
- bitwize 8y agoIt's a part of the French literary and artistic tradition. In France (and elsewhere on the Continent), authors and artists are considered to have inherent rights to their work that are stronger than normal copyright, including the right to be named as the author and the perpetual right (transmissible to heirs after death) to control how their work is presented and consumed to some extent -- hence the phrase droits d'auteur (authors' rights).