Nicolas Sarkozy Caught Mass 'Pirating' DVDs; Time To Kick Him Off The Internet
from the see-ya-later-nicky dept
Why is it always the adamant defenders of silly policies like kicking people off the internet for copyright infringement who are later found to be mass infringers themselves? French President Nicolas Sarkozy, of course, was the first major politician to support the concept of kicking people off the internet for copyright infringement (more commonly called a "three strikes" rule). He took credit for coming up with the idea originally nearly two years ago, and pushed very hard for the law -- which eventually passed but was then tossed out as unconstitutional in France. Sarkozy still stood by it and helped bring back a revised version.Of course, in the middle of all this, there was a bit of irony in that Sarkozy was caught using music without authorization in some online videos, for which he paid a €30,000 fine. Of course, it now appears that may have just been the tip of the iceberg. Boing Boing points us to the news that Sarkozy's administration has been caught mass "pirating" DVDs of a documentary about Sarkozy. The publisher of the documentary only made 50 copies. Sarkozy's "audiovisual services" group happened to make itself another 400 without permission -- even replacing the name of the original publisher on the cover.
Once again, this should be a "teachable moment," to point out to Sarkozy and other supporters of such plans to kick people off the internet that the issue isn't quite so simple after all. When you're on the other side, sometimes it seems perfectly natural to make a copy of something, without even realizing it's potentially infringing. Unfortunately, why do I get the feeling that Sarkozy won't change his stance one bit -- or even recognize the irony of the situation?
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: copyright, dvds, france, nicolas sarkozy, piracy
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Sarkozy
Kick him off the internet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sarkozy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Sarkozy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Sarkozy
coming up with 30 thou euro and clearly not even batting an eye is a ton of money.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sarkozy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Because
Because that's not what his corporate overlords are paying him for. They are paying him to pass laws that defy common sense no matter what era in time you are from.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
An answer from inside the Helmet:
Uh, well, I usually like to go off on massive diatribes with tons of quotes and so forth, but this one can be answered simply:
Because most of them are politicians and politicians as a rule are absolutely 100% mega full of shit.
Next question, please....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: An answer from inside the Helmet:
Because they see copyright as a fence - with us at one side and them at the other. The copyright laws don't apply on "their" side of the fence unless they are in their favour!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: An answer from inside the Helmet:
Like I said,
Kick'em off the World Wide EARTH!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
because thats not the problem
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
this isn't innocent infringment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yes, but..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yes, but..
He didn't step out of the piracy arena by stepping into the criminal arena, he stepped further into the piracy arena while stepping into the criminal arena (they overlap).
Even if copyright was limited back to the way it was, this guy would still be slammed by it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Taking the hipocritic oath seriously
Because he is a politician (liar), has no ethics (sleazeball), and takes the hipocritic oath he swore to when he first ran for public office quite seriously...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Intentional or no, that IS quite funny. For the US man on the street Belgium is the "waffle capital of the world". While in Europe Belgium faces the same sort of unreasonable scorn as do rural states and Florida here in the U.S.
Of course, maybe you meant "boycott the EU (Brussles)", which is also an interesting concept... bring pressure from his "peers".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Because he's French and the leader of one of the G8.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Because he's French and the leader of one of the G8.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Michael Lockyear ... eh, he's French.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No soup for you!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Article 67 : The President of The Republic is not responsable for acts accomplised in this quality, [...].
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The funniest thing is that if they'd produced the documentary themselves and stuck it on a p2p network it would have got far more views anyway!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mike REEEEEEEACHES again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's only 2 strikes...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Im A Pirate
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sarkozy (actually, someone in an office somewhere near his) makes 300 copies of something, and you guys are calling out the hit squads.
Yet, many of the people posting here have put movies, music, and whatnot that they don't own the rights to on the internet, where perhaps millions of people have copied and profited from it.
Don't you think maybe you should call the hit squads on yourself first?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Yet, many of the people posting here have put movies, music, and whatnot that they don't own the rights to on the internet, where perhaps millions of people have copied and profited from it.
Well, first, I haven't done any of that... but the point isn't that making copies is bad. The point is that if you're going to claim making copies is bad and then pass laws that go against those who make copies... and then it turns out that you are illegally making copies, shouldn't those laws apply to you first?
I would think that was sorta common sense. The people aren't arguing that the "hit squads" are a good thing. They're just using them to show the hypocrisy from Sarkozy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IP law in a new age
Where is the line drawn? Protection has mutated to control. It's time to overhaul IP law from the ground up, else the present outdated mindset loses control because they refuse to adapt. When communication is available, information will flow. Intellectual property law will change, whether done in a controlled fashion, or having been forced to change because of the things that are reasonable and possible in the modern age of communication.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
French Gov. to protect (rich) PIRATES
In its affidavit, GROUPAMA argued that bank secrecy entitled it to limit the scope of Police investigations to a building that was not the place where evidences about the infraction were officially collected.
After the fraud was discovered and denounced by the victim, as GROUPAMA managed to have the General Prosecutor of Paris to state that Police was 'right' to ignore the criminal file and focus only on the irrelevant information provided by GROUPAMA itself, there is room for serious doubts in the way that affair was conducted.
As a matter of facts, FINAMA and GROUPAMA have reported false information to the markets regarding their own accounts (where the fraud describbed below has never been reported).
This unfortunate event is more than likely to compromize the confidence ratings of French (bank and insurance) regulated markets on the proven basis that the numbers cannot be trusted.
All the details, including the General Prosecutor reply, the BEFTI investigation file and the unofficial affidavit cooked by GROUPAMA have been made publicly available:
http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf
[ link to this | view in chronology ]