The Societe; civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France, or the SPPF, have been given the go-ahead to sue four US companies for developing P2P applications with the intention of distributing illegal content, TorrentFreak reports. The four applications in question are Vuze, Limewire, Mopheus and Shareaza. Shareaza is hosted by the open source development platform SourceForge, so the SPPF have decided to sue SorceForge for being responsible for the distribution of the application. According to recent French legislation, all P2P software must have a built-in feature to block the transfer of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works.The SPPF's argument is that these applications permit the distribution of copyrighted works. This is in contrast to the US's laws, which state that as long as the developers don't support the use of their software for copyright infringement then no action can be taken. Vuze has already appealed against the go-ahead, and is currently suing the SPPF for destroying the company's reputation based on false and harmful allegations made by the organisation. In a statement, Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa responded that the claims are "simply wrong", and that the business fully complies with both French and American laws. The lawsuit against the SPPF has been given the green light by a different French court, and recently denied the SPPF's attempts to stop these claims.
By far the most worrying aspect of this lawsuit is the inclusion of SourceForge. Instead of going after the developers of the application itself, the industry has decided to sue one of the largest contributors towards open-source. How this will make an impact on SourceForge remains to be seen.
Vuze is for bittorrent, right? Bittorrent is used a lot for legitimate purposes as well.
Seems silly to sue people for implementing a filesharing protocol. Can be used for good as well as for evil.
People don't ban planes either, even if they're often used for bombing.
They are what the users make them. The open-source community could well suffer if the Torrent programs disappeared. I always download and seed the torrents of my Linux ISOs and OpenOffice.org installers because it keeps the torrent healthy and saves bandwidth for the distribution site. Torrent programs have nothing to do with what they are used for. It's the torrent hosting sites that should bear the brunt of the piracy lawsuits.
It's like suing the tarmac companies for people speeding on their roads.
No, suing SourceForce is like suing tarmac companies for people speeding on their roads. Suing BitTorrent developers is like suing companies who make radar detectors for people to speed on roads. Yes, it technically "could" be used legally, but CUT THE ****ING BULL****. The legal use is a **** drop in the bucket compared to the people who abuse it to break the law.
Fine then you pay for the terabytes of bandwidth that the Fedora, Mandriva, *buntu, etc, etc sites need every time the latest ISO comes out.
In the end, it's still the user's that are ruining Bittorrent, If people want to use it to infringe copyright law, then stop them, but they shouldn't ruin it for everyone else.
While they're at it, why don't they sue the knife companies for producing the tool that killed the last stab victim, and neglect to consider all the food that the rest of the knives will be helping prepare.
I would suggest you actually mean like suing the car manufacturers.
Radar detectors are quite obviously for illegal purposes - BT is a method of file downloading. Like a type of car engine.
Analogies are useless
On that basis there's probably sufficient grounds for them to sue the official bittorrent client developers, I meant that has its legal and illeagal uses.
Or suing ammunition makers for what people do with them.
Oh! wait! making ammunition is actually legal even if they are MOSTLY used to kill people which is supposed to be illegal.
This is the world we live in guys. A really really weird world where money talk more than us.
The problem with p2p network is not that people do illegal things with them. It's that they do not bring money to the table.
The sad thing about p2p networks is not music and movie sharing. It's all the pedo who use p2p networks to share their ****. But since sharing pedo stuffs do not harm some big companies nobody talk about it ...
Money talk. Don't be a fool to think that the legality of p2p networks is actually the problem. As long as no big companies lose money the legality of something is not a problem at all.
Little edit: I don't care for LimeWire to be honest and the rest, but I do care for SourceForge. (Just to clarify my post).
What still baffles me is the fact that the same reasoning can be applied to torrenting in general. After all, the hosts of the torrent files and the tracker providers don't actually host any illegal content. For that reason, they aren't responsible for what gets shared. Of course, there are those like isoHunt, which happens to have "isoHunt Releases" for some illegal torrents. THEY could be held responsible because they support the illegal torrents. Although the logic for doing so is quite fallacious, most people don't think using only logic. See the Unexpected Hanging Paradox for an example of what I mean (you might even find it interesting).
Madness.
In case the RIAA hasn't noticed, most torrent software is open-source. For those of you (from the RIAA) who don't know what that means, it means that you can't kill all the Torrent clients just by shutting down the companies currently developing it. If you do that, someone else will just pick up the source code and compile a some versions, which they will then promptly distribute. Result? The RIAA has a pile of legal bills to pay and the torrents continue to torrent. For those of you keeping score at home, that's RIAA 0, Torrents ∞.
Thanks for reading, RIAA members. Next week, I'll explain for you the meaning of the word: "Futile"
And we all know that all p0rns are teh fault of teh Internets too.
So, I guess that means Al Gore is the one to go after! LOLZ
Ignorant french music publishers, who the fark cares what they publish anyway.
Name one MAINSTREAM french artist.
Didn't think so.
Ditto 'Daft Punk'.
In addition: Air, Cassius & Jean Michel Jarre.
Though, going on market penetration I'd have to say that 'Daft Punk' are the most mainstream - what with sales and being multi Emmy nominated. Jarre seemed to peak in the 80s. But, no idea if he ever "made it" in the States.
Surely they must be able to see the difference between the developer and the user.
But to sue a software distribution company like sourceforge is just asking for trouble, as they can not control every single thing that is posted, let alone since the devs of those applications themselves can't even control what people use them for, it really is like suing a car manufacturer because people speed or race each other using their cars. Torrents are the newest and biggest thing to file transfers, it cuts back on the stress of a single server getting millions of hits (think Firefox 3 launch day, if only they had a torrent in those first few hours.) and lets users feel like they are giving back to others at the same time. It is not all for bad use because I find myself downloading a new distro of linux through it or using it to share my own work. Even then, I have found myself illegally downloading a CD that I already own, just so I have it on my PC without having to take it out of my car, Or even download a game I already own so I don't mess up the CD, or so I don't have to deal with DRM.
They need to embrace and improve torrents and p2p because that is what people want, they want what they want and they want it now! without hassles, without DRM, and without being sued!
Why not sue all ISP's for allowing people onto the internet to download this material? **** off back to your hole tbh.
Also, ROFL at trying to sue SourceForge. That'll get thrown out immediately.
LOLZ
If RIAA files this case, all I see is wasted time, money and paper (RIAA please realize that you will contribute for an ~0.00001% of global warming with this wasted paper). I have already wasted my share or time on this...
Without electricity, the person could never had burned, ripped, or done anything with the content. Let's all go back to the stone age! Sue the power companies! They powered the computer that shared the illegal content!
Man. The idiocy of people and companies nowadays is just mind boggling. But then again, it isn't new. In the same sort of issue, VCR manufactorers were sued to stop building VCRs because they could record and potentially duplicate movies and television content. Home movies, in all its forms, often provides the studios more money then the movie did in the boxoffice! They would have destroyed this massive amount of income if they had the chance. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Pirates are right around spammers as far as scum of the Earth is concerned. There is no justification for stealing and it's about time we stopped enabling it. I'm sure the argument to that will be "better sue ISPs and operating system vendors too" which is horribly short-sighted since ISPs and operating systems enable so much more than illegal file sharing.
I would really prefer that individual pirates face the consequences for their theft rather than a service like Limewire since it does have (however small) legitimate uses. However, it seems that this can't be done in a responsible and ethical way so the next logical step is to take down the network that is used overwhelmingly for illegal file sharing.
Will this cause pirates to run out and buy their music on CD's? No, of course not. Likely they will find another way that the law will have to catch up with and the cycle continues. However, by not doing anything it sends the message that it's Ok and that's a real problem, especially in Canada where people get the idea that since there's no punishment, it's not a crime.
Pirates are right around spammers as far as scum of the Earth is concerned. There is no justification for stealing and it's about time we stopped enabling it. I'm sure the argument to that will be "better sue ISPs and operating system vendors too" which is horribly short-sighted since ISPs and operating systems enable so much more than illegal file sharing.
I would really prefer that individual pirates face the consequences for their theft rather than a service like Limewire since it does have (however small) legitimate uses. However, it seems that this can't be done in a responsible and ethical way so the next logical step is to take down the network that is used overwhelmingly for illegal file sharing.
Will this cause pirates to run out and buy their music on CD's? No, of course not. Likely they will find another way that the law will have to catch up with and the cycle continues. However, by not doing anything it sends the message that it's Ok and that's a real problem, especially in Canada where people get the idea that since there's no punishment, it's not a crime.
Repeat after me "it is not stealing".
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