(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

Under the cover of the DADVSI law with the so-called Vivendi amendment (initiated by Vivendi Universal) the French association SPPF (Société civile des producteurs de phonogramme en France - The French collective society for phonogram producers representing the independent labels) started a legal action against P2P software producers.

The Vivendi amendment, strongly debated in the Parliament, but supported by Nicolas Sarkozy and barely passed by the Joint Committee of the National Assembly and the Senate, considers as criminal the creation and distribution of all software obviously intended to provide to public some unauthorised copyrighted works. The non-compliance is punished by three years of prison and a 300 000 Euro fine. From a civil law point of view, the amendment obliges the creators of the P2P software to implement prevention measures in order to prohibit downloading alleged illegal content.

The amendment gave SPPF the opportunity to file ridiculous actions against two P2P software producers Morpheus and Azureus with a third, Shareaza, being next in line to be sued.

SPPF initiated the suit as a civil action, considering the criminal actions would have been too complicated to organize. Also the civil actions give the possibility to ask for consistent damages as stated Jérôme Roger, SPPF director. SPPF asks 16.6 millions Euros from Azureus and 3.7 millions Euros from Morpheus. The figures are based on a poll carried out by AdVestigo company, of downloads in the P2P networks over a period of 10 months on a sample of 4750 titles. Then the results were enlarged for their entire catalogue of 475 000 titles and the total was multiplied with 2 Euros (1 Euro as the price for a sale and 1 Euro as damages).

France : SPFF attacks Morpheus, Azureus and Shareaza (only in French, 12.06.2007)
http://www.ratiatum.com/news5163_France_la_SPFF_attaque_Morpheus_Azure...

P2P : Details on the legal actions of SPPF (only in French, 12.06.2007)
http://www.ratiatum.com/breve5164_P2P_precisions_sur_les_actions_judic...

EDRI-gram : Update on French EUCD Transposition (29.03.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.6/frencheucd