Repression of Internet Copying of Copyrighted Works
The DADVSI law contains a number of articles meant to suppress the copying of copyrighted music or videos through peer-to-peer networks over the Internet.
The initial version of the bill punished most acts related to illegal copying of copyrighted material, including working around anti-copy systems, as a felony counterfeiting, with a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison and/or a 300,000€ fine. However, a number of parliamentarians contended that this was equivalent to criminalizing millions of Internet users, especially the young, and Minister Donnedieu de Vabres immediately introduced amendments known as "escalation": peer-to-peer users who copy files illegally would first be warned, then fined, with stronger penalties for repeat offenders.
Finally, the choice was made to criminalize authors and publishers of software capable of unlocking copy protection system or copying copyrighted works over the Internet, while users would receive much softer penalties.
Read more about this topic: DADVSI
Famous quotes containing the words repression of, repression, copying and/or works:
“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)
“The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)