October 9, 2009
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a backer of tough new piracy laws in that country, comes off as a bit of a hypocrite after being accused of a pair of copyright infringements.
Sarkozy’s “Hadopi” law was passed just last month and features a three-strike policy for illegal down loaders. Unfortunately it would appear that Sarkozy is already down to his last strike, as he has been accused of two misuses—making 400 unauthorized copies of a DVD and copyright infringement related to his use of an MGMT song at a political rally.
The MGMT song misuse cost Sarkozy 30,000 Euros (approximately $44,112 U.S.). More galling may be the fact that the publisher of the DVD allegedly copied by Sarkozy only created 50 copies itself.
Via Boing Boing
Comments
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
This is great, it's like an episode of Yes Minister.
I can just imagine a minister citing digital piracy as a scourge of the free market and so attempting to pass off a law ... only to be revealed as a hypocrite at the last minute. Classic.
I wonder how he'll try to weasel out of it? He'll either open up to it and take the hit (And can surely afford to pay the fine) or blame it on a junior minister or something ludicrous.
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
So wait, did he do it, or did one of his people do it? If he did it himself or signed off on it, that's different than having a person on your team responsible for getting the music and them breaking the law without your knowledge.
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
Politicans are hypocrites thats a fact of life
Never underestimate the power of idiots in large amounts.
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
wait wait wait how does making 400 copies only count as one strike?
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
This news made my day! Talk about a hyprocrit and a fail!
http://www.magicinkgaming.com/
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
its a french spitzer!
love how these politicians do this though. They go against something but are then cought doing it themselves like they hadn't a clue! worse yet they often don't have a clue what their fighting WHILE their doing it.
who was that Congressman that was trying to have semi auto hunting guns banned, but then busted using one to hunt after getting one sent to him by the NRA, then claimed he "didn't know" it was semi auto? proves to me that he hadn't a clue either A. what a semi auto weapon is, (i mean come on, is it really hard to tell the differance between semi and non? physical chamber loading may be a simple hint) or B. really didn't care and was just prodding for votes.
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
Unfortunately 70% if not more of "piracy" involves friends share stuff with friends, and because of that you can not write it all off as industry damaging. Focus on thigns that make money from direct sale,donations and advertising these are iron clad things that can be easily targeted and removed. If you target "free trading" it will though unintended (or most likely intended) consequence that will make most legal things illegal because they can make it so via their lobbying efforts.
The media industry is either going to have to change or become the net police, and it seems more likely they will become the net fascists than anything else.
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! Stop supporting big media and furthering the criminalization of consumers!! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
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http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
Haha.. What a friggin hypocrite..
Re: Sacre Bleu: French Prez a Pirate
"More galling may be the fact that the publisher of the DVD allegedly copied by Sarkozy only created 50 copies itself."
HAHAHAHAHA, this blows all RIAA and MPAA estimates out of the water. Imagine thier next campaign, "PROOF that internet pirates are stealing 80% of our sales!"