The SPPF’s Masquerade Continues

For those who missed out on the French RIAA attack on four US-based companies that develop peer-to-peer applications last month, this is in what P2POn reported on November 15 – Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), a representative organization for a number of record labels in France, emphatically holds the four file-sharing applications responsible for mass copyright infringement, apparently overlooking the fact that the companies themselves are not actually committing any illegality and the software can be just as well be used for legal distribution of files. It’s just a matter of how the user chooses to use it (read the entire post).

Meanwhile, this caricature of a case has become even more out of order as the SPPF enforced its position with even more absurd reasons and arguments.

Serdar Yegulalp, from the Information Week went on investigating the matter to get a bigger picture of it and, by his own claim, was directed to the blog of the "CoPeerRight Agency", which is allegedly "the first specialized agency in the protection of royalties and the fight against digital piracy on Peer-to-Peer networks and the Internet" ("1ère agence spécialisée dans la protection des droits d'auteur et la lutte contre la contrefaçon numérique sur les réseaux Peer-to-Peer et Internet").

Last month the French RIAA, the SPPF, declared that it was bringing suit against SourceForge for aiding and abetting peer-to-peer piracy. It sounded ludicrous, and now there's better evidence to show it is indeed every bit as stupid as it sounded.

Below we offer both the original post in French (for those of you who parle cette language) and Yegulalp’s (admittedly shaky) translation:

Nous aimerions revenir sur l’assignation étonnante de SourceForge, qui ne manque pas de nous plonger dans la perplexité. Le directeur général de la SPPF, Jérôme Roger, explique cette mise en cause de la manière suivante : « SourceForge est une société qui a travaillé pour le compte de Shareaza et que nous avons mise en cause dans la mesure où ses ingénieurs ont procédé au développement du logiciel – qui a aujourd’hui disparu en tant que logiciel P2P – Shareaza ». Mais, tout d’abord, le logiciel Shareaza existe toujours puisque sa dernière version date du 1er octobre 2008 (version 2.4.0.0).

Par ailleurs, en suivant le raisonnement adopté par la SPPF, pourquoi ne pas attaquer 01net qui propose des liens vers Shareaza, Limewire, eMule, Azureus etc. ? De même, si toute société qui développe des programmes permettant de commettre des actes de contrefaçon numérique devait être assignée en justice, pourquoi ne pas attaquer les navigateurs Internet comme Firefox (distribué par Mozilla Foundation), ou Chrome (développé parGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG)) ?

Le directeur général de la SPPF mentionnait que 180 logiciels avaient été identifiés comme permettant l’échange illégal d’œuvres de son répertoire, pourquoi alors la société a-t-elle ciblé trois éditeurs en particulier ? Enfin, d’après les explications de la SPPF justifiant ces procédures judiciaires, pourquoi n’a-t-elle pas attaqué BitTorrent qui est le protocole utilisé par le logiciel Vuze ?

English version

We would like to return to the astonishing indictment of SourceForge, which does not fail to plunge us into perplexity. The managing director of the SPPF, Jerome Roger, explains the reasoning for this in the following way: "SourceForge is a company which worked on behalf of Shareaza and which we blamed insofar as its engineers carried out the development of the software — which disappeared today as a P2P program — Shareaza". But, first of all, the Shareaza software has always been available, up to its most recent version dated October 1, 2008 (version 2.4.0.0).

In addition, while following the reasoning adopted by the SPPF, why not attack 01net which has connections with Shareaza, Limewire, eMule, Azureus etc? In the same way, if any company which develops programs that enable acts of digital piracy were to be accused, why not attack Internet browsers like Firefox (distributed by Mozilla Foundation), or Chrome (developed by Google)?

Why, then, if the managing director of the SPPF mentioned that 180 Software had been identified as enabling the illegal exchange of works in its [SPPF's] repertory, did the company target three editors in particular? Lastly, according to the explanations of the SPPF justifying these legal procedures, why didn't it attack BitTorrent, which is the protocol used by the software application Vuze?

I think Yegulalp is right to conclude that the novelty in the SPPF case and claim (and absurdity) is that apart from their hosting the Shareaza project, SourceForge is indicted of actively working with the guys from Shareaza project to develop it. Well, big organizations such as the now-looking-for-media-attention-and-to-extort-some-money SPPF prove once again their “knowledge” in the ways of the Internet and software development their and, of course the righteousness of their judgment when it comes to file sharing. Merde!