French Court Orders P2P News Site To Report On File Sharing Convictions

from the freedom-of-the-press? dept

Here's an odd one. Apparently a French news site that focuses on file sharing/BitTorrent/P2P news has been ordered by a court to report on the convictions of file sharers in France. It's not entirely clear under what laws, but perhaps it's a "fairness doctrine" type of thing. Apparently, the big entertainment companies took the site to court over its failure to report on the convictions. The site is more well known for pushing back against things like three strikes laws or the typical propaganda from the industry -- so the industry pushed it to also publish news of the convictions. What's weird is that these "conviction reports" include lots of personal information on those who were convicted, including names, addresses, and birth dates. I'm somewhat surprised the site didn't try to put these convictions into a bit more "context" to show how silly or unreasonable they might be -- but perhaps the court order forbids that.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: convictions, file sharing, france, reporting


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Patrick, 16 Jun 2009 @ 11:22am

    Apparently they're being compensated for publishing information on the convictions, so I guess it really is a fairness thing.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Fabrice Epelboin (profile), 16 Jun 2009 @ 11:40am

    not excatly

    It's a very usual court order in France, the new thing here is that usualy, it's published in a normal (offline) newspaper.

    Numerama is a technews website among the very few who battled against the Hadopi law (Numerama, Ecrans.fr, PCimpact and ReadWriteWeb France). It has a very big trafic, this is why the court decided to publish the conviction on Numerama.

    On a sidenote, Guillaume Champeau from Numerama wrote a post about how he would disable crawlers on the conviction in order for the content not to be cached by google.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    mike42 (profile), 16 Jun 2009 @ 12:06pm

    France...

    Poster-child for the need for separation of Corp and State.
    (US is the runner-up)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2009 @ 12:21pm

    Re: France...

    I think it's the other way around but, heh, whatevs.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Jun 2009 @ 12:43pm

    Re: Re: France...

    Arguable.

    France's corporations are more entrenched and abusive, but American corporations are both larger and more prone to use their unofficial government backing to go pushing around other governments.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    stat_insig (profile), 16 Jun 2009 @ 1:37pm

    Re: France...

    I wonder where Iran fits in your list!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2009 @ 3:00pm

    how would it have those people name`s?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    Sammie Houston (profile), 17 Jun 2009 @ 4:23am

    Watunes, The New Music Industry!

    To help alleviate issues with P2P whereby artists & record labels lose revenues, we offer a solution a medium to put the power back into the artist & record labels pocket. As representatives for the largest digital distribution in the world, we will show you how to benefit from a Digital Distribution relationship. Gone are the days of selling your music through a physical means. Statistics say 48% of teenagers purchased their music online in 2007 with that number increasing from 32% a year prior. If you are still slanging CD’s, you are quickly falling into the dinosaur arena. We can help you change all that.

    Watunes offers services for the entire independent music community, whether you already have digital representation or are just getting started in the digital world. We make it easy to distribute your content to digital outlets, promote your content using our innovative marketing systems, and manage your catalog and sales using our first-class technology.

    WaTunes is a social media distribution service that enables artists, groups, and record labels to sell music, music videos, and audiobooks through leading online entertainment retailers, including iTunes,ShockHound, and eMusic. Artists and labels can sell unlimited music and earn 100% of their profits – ALL FOR FREE! In fact, as of Tuesday June 9th, we signed NBA Legend and Hall of Famer Earl ‘the Pearl’ Monroe who owns record label Reverse Spin Records. The link is listed right below & you can either click on it and/or copy & paste into your browser. I've also attached a PDF file of all the other services we're affiliated with should you choose to upgrade to our VIP service! Please direct any further inquires, comments, questions, or concerns to us. We're more than elated to serve you anyway we possibly can.


    Best,


    Sammie


    Earl "the Pearl" Monroe link:

    http://news.google.com/news?client=safari&rls=en&q=watunes&oe=UTF-8&um=1&am p;ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wn


    --
    watunes.com


    Sammie Houston
    SVP, Client Services
    e-mail: sammiehouston@watunes.com
    Skype ID: sammie.houston
    Office: 678-598-2439

    Sneak Preview: http://tinyurl.com/dh3mum


    Youtube advertisements:

    http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=vJhsSKB2-u4

    http://www.youtube.comwatch?v=O2AYrc DVhCs

    Check out our Reviews, add your comments & feedback too:

    http://www.rateitall.com/i-1125252
    watunes.aspx

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.