EU legal advisor: disclosing identities of suspected copyright pirates "compatible" with EU privacy laws; Boing Boing, September 29, 2023

ROB BESCHIZZA, Boing Boing; EU legal advisor: disclosing identities of suspected copyright pirates "compatible" with EU privacy laws

"Releasing pirates' identities is "Compatible With EU Privacy Laws," says a top legal advisor to the European Union's highest court following the discovery that the French government retains more than a decade of data collected about millions of people suspected of infringing copyrights."

Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter; AP, August 3, 2023

AP; Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter

"AP; Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter  "France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, says it is pursuing a copyright case against X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in an effort to secure potential payment for its news content."

Jeff Koons Is Found Guilty of Copying. Again.; The New York Times, November 8, 2018

Alex Marshall, The New York Times;

Jeff Koons Is Found Guilty of Copying. Again.


"On Thursday, a court in Paris ordered Mr. Koons, his company Jeff Koons L.L.C., the Pompidou Center and a book publisher to jointly pay Mr. Davidovici almost $170,000 for breach of copyright and damages caused. The amount is small compared to the value of Mr. Koons’s “Fait d’hiver,” which the Prada Foundation bought for over $4 million at auction in 2007.”

The Future of Open Government; Huffington Post, 12/19/16

Manish Bapna, Huffington Post; The Future of Open Government:

"This blog post is co-authored with Jean-Vincent Placé, French Minister of State for State Reform and Simplification, attached to the Prime Minister.

More than 4,000 people gathered in Paris from 7-9th December for the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit 2016 hosted by the Government of France. OGP is a unique partnership dedicated to making government decision making more open, inclusive and responsive. Summit attendees included representatives from 80 governments, many of them heads of state and senior ministers; leaders from cities, municipalities and regions; and leading civil society organizations from around the world.

The goal for the summit was to highlight the crucial role of open government as a countervailing force to the rise of various forms of nationalism and populism around the world."

The International Fight Over Marcel Duchamp's Chess Set; Atlantic, 9/8/15

Quinn Norton, Atlantic; The International Fight Over Marcel Duchamp's Chess Set:

"Often called Moral Rights, French creators and their heirs are entitled not only to remuneration, but a high degree of creative control on how their works are used or represented in the world. It was this idea, of controlling how the artist's creation is used by others, that brought the estate to issue their Cease and Desist against Kildall and Cera. Farcot is particularly interested in how 3D printing is influenced by the mishmash of Berne laws governing the world. I spoke with him while he was waiting on an Ultimaker print of toys he was giving children in an upcoming weekend workshop he was teaching.

“It’s not black or white,” Farcot said. “It’s not easy for the creators, Kildall and Cera, to... say they should go ahead, go to court and they will win easily.” Facing a ruinously expensive legal fight thousands of miles and an ocean away, Kildall and Cera backed down. They quietly removed the files from Thingiverse, and negotiated a resolution with Duchamp’s heirs.

If the case was too hard to fight in French court, it would have been almost too easy to fight in U.S. court, the jurisdiction that could affect the lives of Kildall and Cera. “So under U.S. law, the chess pieces are absolutely in the public domain... and a U.S. court won’t honor French moral rights. I don’t see any practical way for the Duchamp estate to sue over the 3D-printed chess pieces in a U.S. court,” said Mitch Stoltz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in intellectual property."

Government Requests to Remove Online Material Increase at Google; New York Times, 12/19/13

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Government Requests to Remove Online Material Increase at Google: "Governments, led by the United States, are increasingly demanding that Google remove information from the Web... Often, the requests come from judges, police officers and politicians trying to hide information that is critical of them. The most common request cites defamation, often of officials... Government requests to remove information increased most significantly in Turkey and Russia because of online censorship laws, according to Google... Google also said officials were resorting to new legal methods to demand that Google remove content, such as citing copyright law to take down transcripts of political speeches or government news releases."

Paper Finds Little Success In ‘Three-Strikes’ IP Enforcement Programmes; Intellectual Property Watch, 9/10/13

Intellectual Property Watch; Paper Finds Little Success In ‘Three-Strikes’ IP Enforcement Programmes: "“Evaluating Graduated Response,” authored by Rebecca Giblin of the Monash University Faculty of Law, is available here. The abstract of the paper reads: “It has been more than three years since the first countries began implementing ‘graduated responses’, requiring ISPs [internet service providers] to take a range of measures to police their users’ copyright infringements. Graduated responses now exist in a range of forms in seven jurisdictions. Right-holders describe them as ‘successful’ and ‘effective’ and are agitating for their further international roll-out. But what is the evidence in support of these claims?” The paper looks at schemes in France, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States and evaluates “the extent to which they are actually achieving the copyright law’s aims,” it says."

French Appear Ready to Soften Law on Media Piracy; New York Times, 6/2/13

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; French Appear Ready to Soften Law on Media Piracy: "Elsewhere, countries that have adopted systems involving warnings and penalties, also known as graduated response, have tended to opt for less draconian measures than France or South Korea, sometimes involving private-sector deals rather than legislation. In the United States, for example, five major Internet providers recently agreed to put in place a so-called copyright alert system, negotiated with the entertainment industry. Sanctions, which can include a temporary slowdown in Internet access speed, do not kick in until an account holder ignores at least five warnings. Analysts say that the backtracking by the French could lessen legislators’ enthusiasm for graduated response systems in other countries, at least if they involve the threat of disconnection."

Divergent Approaches To Copyright Reform Emerge In Europe; Intellectual Property Watch, 8/3/12

Dugie Standeford, Intellectual Property Watch; Divergent Approaches To Copyright Reform Emerge In Europe:

"Two very different views of copyright reform emerged this week, one from a report commissioned by the UK government, the other from a French citizens’ advocacy group. The former envisions an intricately linked system of digital rights exchanges and databases to streamline copyright licensing, the latter broad, “non-market” sharing of protected works between individuals, among other things. Whether either approach is feasible remains to be seen, and, as always, the devil’s in the details, lawyers say."

French Publisher Group Strikes Deal With Google Over E-Books; New York Times, 6/11/12

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; French Publisher Group Strikes Deal With Google Over E-Books:

"The French Publishers Association and the Société des Gens de Lettres, an authors’ group, dropped lawsuits in which they contended that Google’s book scanning in France violated copyright. Google agreed to set up a “framework” agreement under which publishers would be able to offer digital versions of their works for Google to sell...

Other digital book initiatives are under way in France; the Parliament recently passed a law authorizing the French National Library to scan so-called orphan works — out-of-print books whose copyright holder cannot be found — for an openly available digital repository. Orphan works would be automatically included unless the rights holders objected within six months."

In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal; New York Times, 8/25/11

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal:

"A second French publisher has reached a deal on digital books with Google to settle a copyright lawsuit in exchange for control over how its out-of-print, copyright-protected works are scanned and sold."

French copyright cops: we're swamped with "three strikes" complaints; ArsTechnica.com, 7/15/11

Timothy B. Lee, ArsTechnica.com; French copyright cops: we're swamped with "three strikes" complaints:

"We can appreciate that Hadopi has a broad mission, but the three strikes program, with its threat to actually disconnect people from the Internet over online infringement, is what has drawn worldwide attention to France's antipiracy program. For example, we've been covering American ISPs' recent tentative steps toward a "graduated response" strategy of their own. Those ISPs took great pains to distinguish their own policies from a French-style 3-strikes plan, promising that they would not spy on their users or disconnect them from the Internet. Disconnection as a sanction has almost come under attack from the United Nations and from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, both of which say the penalty is disproportionate to the offense."

Music Industry Braces for the Unthinkable; New York Times, 1/24/11

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; Music Industry Braces for the Unthinkable:

""We are at one of the most worrying stages yet for the industry,” he continued. “As things stand now, digital music has failed.”

Music executives disagree, saying there is hope, as long as they can come to grips with piracy, which according to the industry federation accounts for the vast majority of music distributed online.

Stronger measures to crack down on unauthorized copying are taking effect in a number of countries, executives note, and even as the authorities wield a heavier stick, the complementary carrots are appearing, too, in the form of innovative digital services."

French publishing giants cave in to Google's great copyright heist; (London) Guardian, 11/22/10

Robert McCrrum, (London) Guardian; French publishing giants cave in to Google's great copyright heist: With Hachette opening up its archives to Google, calls for a public digitisation project are getting more urgent than ever:

"Robert Darnton's response, in the same issue, is intriguing. No one, I think, has looked harder at this issue, or addressed it with such a fine sense of historical precedent and nuance. Basically, what Darnton now advocates is the incremental construction of a US digital library in which each separate copyright category (and there are several) would be accommodated by special agreements between interested parties. In stark contrast to the senior executives of Google who contrive to seem both arrogant and secretive, Darnton now says that "the Digital Public Library of America", a model for libraries the world over, should emerge from "a broad debate on a national scale" and that "the people themselves should have a voice in its design"."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/22/hachette-google-digital-public-library

Google Strikes Deal With French Publisher; New York Times, 11/18/10

Eric Pfanner and David Jolly, New York Times; Google Strikes Deal With French Publisher:

"Google said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/business/global/18book.html

Film Director Comes to the Defense of a Convicted Internet Pirate; New York Times, 9/22/10

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; Film Director Comes to the Defense of a Convicted Internet Pirate:

"A Frenchman convicted of copyright theft for illegally downloading thousands of songs on the Internet has found an unlikely patron: a famous film director."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/technology/22iht-godard.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=copyright&st=cse

U.K. Approves Crackdown on Internet Pirates; New York Times, 4/8/10

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; U.K. Approves Crackdown on Internet Pirates:

"The British Parliament on Thursday approved plans to crack down on digital media piracy by authorizing the suspension of repeat offenders’ Internet connections.

Following the House of Commons late Wednesday, the House of Lords on Thursday approved the bill after heavy lobbying from the music and movie industries, which say they suffer huge losses from unauthorized copying over the Internet.

The law makes Britain the second large European country, after France, to approve a so-called graduated response system, under which online copyright violators face temporary suspensions of their Internet accounts if they ignore warning letters to stop.

“The U.K. has today joined the ranks of those countries who have taken decisive and well-considered steps to address the issue,” John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said in a statement. “We hope this will prompt more focus and urgency for similar measures in other countries where debate is under way.”

The anti-piracy plan is part of a broader bill aimed at stimulating the development of the digital economy in Britain."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09piracy.html?hpw

Google gets digital foothold in France; Sydney Morning Herald, 12/21/09

Roland Lloyd Parry, Sydney Morning Herald; Google gets digital foothold in France:

"Despite fierce resistance to Google's plans to digitise the world's books, observers say it is well placed to start scanning Europe's cultural treasures -- beginning in France, where the US giant got a digital foothold this week.

The Internet search giant on Monday began peeling open the pages of half a million books from the grand Municipal Library of Lyon and is contracted to scan them within 10 years, the library's director Patrick Bazin told AFP...

Google on Monday began working through 500,000 of the library's works at a location near Lyon -- where the library can easily check on the work -- hand-scanning each page of the delicate volumes individually, Bazin said.

The antique books include a 16th-century edition of predictions by Nostradamus, Isaac Newton's 17th-century scientific treatise "Principia" and a work by the French humourist Rabelais from the same period.

Under the contract, the Lyon library will use the digital images of its books for its own purposes but notably cedes to Google the right to exploit them commercially for 25 years. Google in return scans the books for free.

The US company has been less welcome elsewhere in France, where digitisation has become bound up with the sensitive issue of protecting French cultural and intellectual property."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/google-gets-digital-foothold-in-france-20091221-l7r2.html

France court rules Google book search violates copyright laws; Jurist, 12/18/09

Jaclyn Belczyk, Jurist; France court rules Google book search violates copyright laws:

"A French court ruled Friday that Google [corporate website] violated French copyright law through its book-scanning initiative [Google Books website]. The Parisian court fined Google €300,000 euros (USD $430,000) for digitizing books and making excerpts available on the web. The challenge was brought in 2006 by French publishing group La Martiniere, along with the French publisher's union Syndicat National de l'Edition (SNE) and the writers' society Societe des Gens de Lettres (SDGL) [websites, in French]. The head of the SNE expressed satisfaction [BBC report] with the verdict. Also this week, a Chinese court agreed to hear [FT report] a challenge to Google's digital books project.

While Friday's ruling is the first time a court has condemned Google's book scanning initiative, the company has also faced legal challenges in the US. Last year, Google agreed to settle [JURIST report] two copyright infringement lawsuits."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/12/france-court-rules-google-book-search.php

Google Loses in French Copyright Case; New York Times, 12/18/09

Matthew Saltmarsh, New York Times; Google Loses in French Copyright Case:

"A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project.

The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors, argued that the industry was being exploited by Google’s Book Search program, which was started in 2005.

The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 euros, or $430,000, in damages and interest and to stop digital reproduction of the material. The company was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day in fines until it removed extracts of some French books from its online database.

Google said it believed that it had complied with French copyright law and that it planned to appeal the decision.

“We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books,” said Philippe Colombet, who is responsible for Google’s books partnership in France.

Mr. Colombet said he did not know whether the company would immediately remove the excerpts or pay the fine; Google’s lawyers were still examining the ruling. He also said there would be no impact on Google’s settlement with publishers and authors in the United States, an agreement that would allow the company the right to digitize, catalog and sell millions of books online that are under copyright protection."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/technology/companies/19google.html?_r=1&hpw