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)
“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can’t improve on these.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)