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Comment by solstice | Hacker News Reader

Why do the French have such a hard-on for copyright enforcement? (Honest question)

The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages.

So I'd argue that the French have a love-affair with traditional publishing, and traditional publishing loves draconian copyright rules.

The whole thing is almost a culture war for the French people's soul by-proxy.

so pride is killing their ability to access information.

In this case I have no pity for them, then. If they want to feel better about themselves by cutting off their own ears because other people are using English then let them.

France has one of the best copyright protection laws that I know, but unfortunately that has to go both ways (no that I agree with the ruling).

Now please don't consider this ruling as one made by the actual researchers, especially the younger ones that had a decent English education and sees no problem using English material.

> The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages.

This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. Most french researchers are perfectly happy using these sites, and dislike strongly the draconian schemes of scientific journal publishers (which publish texts mostly in english). Several people are pushing for french university libraries to stop paying subscriptions to journals and give all that money directly to scihub. Yet, these initiatives are always blocked at higher levels.

Yes, few facts to support this claim: the french are big consumers of SciHub content (biggest in the EU [1]) and the CNRS (one of the main french national scientific organization) has boycotted traditional publishers on several occasions (e.g. Springer [2]). The CNRS also supports Hal which is the french equivalent of arXiv.

I think this has more to do with the copyright lobby than anything else.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-sc... (in french)

[2] https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities...

[3] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/

> This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen.

But everything to do with the French government's attitude towards traditional publishers and why they work so closely together. This issue doesn't begin and end with research publishing, it is bigger and older than that.

Calling something "ridiculous" simply because you want a black & white answer to a larger complex cultural phenomenon is a little disappointing.

> The French really love their language

Well, someone has to.

I don't think it's specific to France. UK has random torrent websites banned the same way. Some regulation comes from EU, which has then been implemented by countries in EU: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive

Publishers used the existing laws to get this ban, as they already did in other countries. I wouldn't be surprised they've started some similar actions in other countries and will end up with similar results.

Honestly, almost every country has copyright laws, so allow this kind of lawsuit.

Same reason as Germany: a large copyright lobby.

it's really not as bad as Germany though.

In Germany they still go after you if you get caught downloading torrents. The French had a three strike rule but I think they've done away with it and went after pirated content providers instead. Which is why we probably have article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive now.

s/downloading/uploading

I think a bit less than the US, because we don't have Disney or Hollywood in general, but it's still pretty high.

Wasnt the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" which extended copyright in the US was to harmonize with the copyright extensions in the EU? And "Unlike copyright extension legislation in the European Union, the Sonny Bono Act did not revive copyrights that had already expired."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

I know some copyright stuff in Europe has been under influence of American companies. And also when the EU tried to reclaim the name of some cheeses and wines, there was some horse trading with the movie industrie.

It's a part of the French literary and artistic tradition. In France (and elsewhere on the Continent), authors and artists are considered to have inherent rights to their work that are stronger than normal copyright, including the right to be named as the author and the perpetual right (transmissible to heirs after death) to control how their work is presented and consumed to some extent -- hence the phrase droits d'auteur (authors' rights).

I think it's fair to say in France that something will "strictly forbidden" (formellement interdit) and by and large ignored, except when a real problem arises or an example is to be made.

Most of Western Europe does. With most of our production having moved to other countries, we rely on our ability to produce and own intellectual property.

Without strong copyrights we would have nothing to trade.

French here. My understanding is that we have a nationally powerful publishing industry (books, movies, music), thus a powerful pro-copyright lobby.

I guess because it's the law, and governments are supposed to enforce the law.

Thats not a special property of France though.

Why doesn't France care as much about other laws?

People write laws. They're generally lobbied for.

I'm slightly baffled by the difference, though, as some other laws are not enforced. For instance, the case where directors of a tyre manufacturer were forcibly taken hostage and physically abused by the workers. Normally, you'd send in the police, arrest hostage-takers and give them long imprisonment.

Just like when your employer commits wage theft, you call the police, they drive over, taze your boss, put him in handcuffs, and book him?

After all, that's what I would expect should happen to a regular thief.

Do you also expect that industrial executives, managers, and everyone down to the line workers get booked on terrorism charges, for poisoning our water supplies, if they are caught illegally polluting?

"Do you also expect that industrial executives, managers, and everyone down to the line workers get booked on terrorism charges, for poisoning our water supplies, if they are caught illegally polluting?"

Not the original poster, but Yes, of course. Who doesn't expect that?

> Who doesn't expect that?

People who have any experience with how the real world works.

At best, the company may get a token fine, with the people giving the orders, and carrying them out never getting held accountable.

At worst, much hooing and hawwing is had about how important <the industry> is, and how <the company> pinky swears that it will never do what they did again.

just because reality is ruined at the moment doesn't mean i shouldn't expect the law to work. plus, we get CEOs sent to jail all the time, so it's not like there's no precedent.

They have very big and powerful unions that could call for a general strike and paralyse the country. So rather than sending SWAT teams to shoot people, they negotiate.

Yes, that was appalling. I guess the directors were expecting the SWAT/GIGN to come, but hours passed and they had to sign documents, and the signature was deemed valid. I don’t even know if the directors were fed or could gonto the bathrooms during that hostage situation.

Torture at its best.

You don't have to look very hard to find better examples of "torture" than being kept for a whole day within an office (with access to the bathrooms obviously, nobody was forced to pee in their pants).

A whole week, if I remember.

Then again, when it’s not enforced and when you know how violent union people can be, you don’t know how long you’ll stay there, and if you will get out alive at all. You only know when it’s over.

What I’m furious about is that the signature should have been considered under duress. It was not.

You're implying that the hostage takers where not arrested or given imprisonment, but in the case of the Goodyear employees they were arrested and sentenced to 24 months imprisonment (15 months suspended).

That's what the victim party had asked for too, so I don't understand what problem there is with this judgment?

Thanks - I did not know that. The hostage-taking did make headlines internationally, any subsequent trial less so.

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