Carla Bruni Sues French Newspaper For 'Counterfeiting' After Posting Clip Of Her Singing WWII Song

from the counterfeiting dept

Tue, Mar 29th 2011 10:14pm — Mike Masnick

Eriq Gardner points our attention to the news that French first lady and singer Carla Bruni is suing a French newspaper claiming "counterfeiting," after it posted a 50-second clip of her singing Douce France, a 68-year-old song by Charles Trenet. As Gardner notes, in the US, this would almost certainly be fair use. But, in France... apparently it's considered "counterfeiting," because the snippet heard "was a simple draft version, a preparatory work and not a definitive recording." Is it any wonder that her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been working hard to make sure France has the most draconian copyright laws around?

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Filed Under: carla bruni, copyright, counterfeiting, france, nicolas sarkozy

18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 29 Mar 2011 @ 10:54pm

France has moral rights too, doesn't it?
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Mar 2011 @ 11:11pm

I'm not so sure this would be fair use in the U.S. Not that it shouldn't be.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Mar 2011 @ 11:12pm

Re:
Apparently not. Otherwise, they would abolish copy'right'.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 12:32am

Re:
There is only one country in the world that doesn't, the U.S.A..

Now if you want to see the more stringent moral rights in the world you should look at Asia in specific South Korea and Japan, you may think this is bad, but when you realize that punishment from infringement rarely goes up the tens of thousands of dollars and the focus is on terminating any harm and not punishment of the infringer you realize that the laws can be ridiculous but people can live with it.

On the other hand when people start focusing on punishing others things will get ugly.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 1:04am

cat a list
It takes this kind of abuse to get peoples attention. No one realizes how insane the system of IP has become. It needs the disinfectant of sunlight.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 1:19am

Makes sense to me. No one should be able to profit from someone else's hard work by copying it, the public demand for new content from popular artists is irrelevant.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 1:25am

Re:
France has moral rights too, doesn't it?

It does, but I don't see how there's a moral rights issue here. Moral rights tend to have to do with making sure someone is properly named and such...
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Mike Masnick (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 1:26am

Re:
Makes sense to me. No one should be able to profit from someone else's hard work by copying it, the public demand for new content from popular artists is irrelevant

Huh? This isn't a replacement. This is a news report about the song, including a snippet.
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Planespotter (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 2:20am

Re:
You either didn't read the article properly or don't grasp the concept of fair use.
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 2:25am

It's a shame no one could solicit an opinion from Charles Trenet, what with him being dead and all. It is his song, after all.

And this is why people hate politicians even more than they hate lawsuit-happy IP protectionists. Even their family members feel they can throw their weight around if things aren't going their way.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 3:39am

Re:
Really?

The unions want to talk to you about all those services that you using to profit on the backs of the hard labor of others, without paying those workers their dues.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 3:41am

Re:
I also believe that America was build on people being able to profit from others hard work, did you pay the workers of your house for their hard work? are you paying them still for the profiting from their work?
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The Devil's Coachman (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 5:59am

Re:
Anything that is contrary to Mike's viewpoint makes sense to you. That is all you worry about. If Mike is for it, you're against it. You're really nothing more than a contrarian, and nobody actually cares what you think, other than to stop by here periodically and make fun of you for it.
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V, 30 Mar 2011 @ 7:37am

But...
mais que dire des enfants?!

(translation: But what about the children?!)
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 8:18am

counterfeit?
Counterfeit implies that it was being passed off as something it was not. Assuming there wasn't some caption that labeled the clip as something it wasn't, I don't see how this is a counterfeit.

Does counterfeit means something different in France?
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Shon Gale (profile), 30 Mar 2011 @ 8:19am

Later with France the Socalist Republic
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Mar 2011 @ 8:25am

Re: Re:
Actually, fair use normally would not apply to private material. As this song (or version) was never released, there is little hope of fair use on it. At best, a news program might be able to claim newsworthiness, but even then, it would be a bit of a stretch to use privately owned material in a public broadcast without permission.
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Ole Husgaard, 30 Mar 2011 @ 11:21am

Just like some English-speaking people incorrectly use the word "theft" when referring to copyright infringement, some French-speaking people seem to like the word "counterfeiting" to just as incorrectly refer to copyright infringement. The reason, of course, is that some people want to have non-commercial file sharing punished the same was as for example the sale of fake medicines that can cost lives.

French copyright law does not have the concept of "fair use". But there is an explicit right of citation in the law. This means that people can cite a part of a copyrighted work without permission, if they properly attribute the creators of the work. I think this is the case here.

French copyright law also has moral rights. And it looks to me like Carla Bruni is trying this approach by now claiming that the recording was a draft version and that citing from it violates her moral rights.
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