James Delahunty
10 Mar 2007 19:39
The French government is currently mulling over changes to the country's copyright laws, in regard to Internet piracy. Under current laws in France, downloading copyrighted material illegally could get you up to three years in prison and a fine up to €300,000. The Justice minister is now recommending that the punishment be adjusted to better suit the actual offense.
For P2P developers, this means that distributing and promoting P2P tools for copyright infringement purposes be punishable by up to three years in jail and a fine of €300,000. However, the difference between actually writing legitimate tools to share digital data and producing tools made and promoted solely for copyright infringement must be noted, though this is a "difference" that may need to be defined by a court of law.
However, those who share files on P2P networks would also be affected by the changes. The punishment for an offense would depend on many factors, including "time frame" of infringement, "willingness" to engage in the dissemination of content. Users who only download files would be the least punished, with jail time ruled out except in cases of re-offending and uploading the content to other users etc.
Source:
Slyck