French Court Okays Music Industry Lawsuit Targeting P2P Companies, Sourceforge

Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) uses new law to target those responsible for creating file-sharing programs and and even a site that hosts one of them.

France continues to be the frontline in the war on file-sharing it seems. It was just two weeks ago that the French Senate approved a controversial "three strikes" or "graduated response" law for those accused of illegal file-sharing.

Now it's being reported that the Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), a group that represents French record labels, has gotten the go ahead (GOOGLE TRANSLATION) from the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) in Paris to sue Vuze, Morpheus, Limewire, and even open source software development and hosting site Sourceforge for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement.

The lawsuit was initially filed back in 2007, but has been blocked up until now over jurisdictional questions being that all four parties are located in the United States. Also, it was only recently that copyright law was amended to allow for the prosecution of those who publish software that can be used for illegal purposes.

DADVSI (Article L. 335-2-1 of the Intellectual Property Code), the fact of "'éditer, to make available to the public or to communicate to public, and knowingly in any form whatsoever, software clearly intended the provision of unauthorized public works or subject "can be sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment and 300 000 euro fine .

"The accusation is based on the so-called amendment that authorizes Vivendi since 2006 been pursuing solutions for publishers to exchange files," said Cedric Manara, a law professor at the EDHEC. "Before this law was not legally possible, or at least very complicated, with little chance of success in France to Napster or Kazaa, that is to pursue companies that had just developed software exchange. Because it was not in itself illegal to publish such software, which could be illegal by their use by Internet users. To attack the problem at source, the beneficiaries have obtained the adoption of this amendment ... "

It's ludicrous for the SPPF to think for a second that it has any chance of outlawing a program for the Internet. The case may now be able to go forward, but surely the SPPF has a slim chance of prevailing.

Vuze, the popular BitTorrent Client, and one of the defendants, is once again expressing its displeasure with the lawsuit and is even going so far as to sue the SPPF for defamation.

Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa stated in a correspondence with ZeroPaid:

While we appreciate the intent of the new French law, we believe SPPF’s complaint is misguided. Vuze is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content using new technology. In that sense, our interests are aligned with the interests of all content owners, including SPPF's members, against piracy.

We are disappointed that SPPF has taken this approach, given that our business is dedicated to the distribution of legitimate content. SPPF's claims against Vuze are simply wrong. The Vuze business complies fully with both French and American law. The recent ruling of the French Court was solely on a jurisdictional issue, not on any merits, and we believe it is in error.

Accordingly, we have appealed it. Separately, Vuze is suing SPPF for defamation based upon several false and harmful statements made by SPPF about Vuze. A different French Court recently denied SPPF's attempt to derail those claims, and is allowing our defamation lawsuit to proceed.

Once again have a case where the music industry, unable or unwilling to adapt to technology, instead attacks it and tries to stifle innovation and progress.

Vuze has gone out of its way to develop a legal content distribution portal, working with copyright holders to establish distribution partnerships and creating the Vuze HD Network as the portal.

If we began outlawing any and all programs and technology that could be used for nefarious purposes at what point do we stop?