Carla Bruni Sues French Newspaper For 'Counterfeiting' After Posting Clip Of Her Singing WWII Song

from the counterfeiting dept

Eriq Gardner points our attention to the news that French first lady and singer Carla Bruni is suing a French newspaper claiming “counterfeiting,” after it posted a 50-second clip of her singing Douce France, a 68-year-old song by Charles Trenet. As Gardner notes, in the US, this would almost certainly be fair use. But, in France… apparently it’s considered “counterfeiting,” because the snippet heard “was a simple draft version, a preparatory work and not a definitive recording.” Is it any wonder that her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been working hard to make sure France has the most draconian copyright laws around?

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Comments on “Carla Bruni Sues French Newspaper For 'Counterfeiting' After Posting Clip Of Her Singing WWII Song”

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18 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

There is only one country in the world that doesn’t, the U.S.A..

Now if you want to see the more stringent moral rights in the world you should look at Asia in specific South Korea and Japan, you may think this is bad, but when you realize that punishment from infringement rarely goes up the tens of thousands of dollars and the focus is on terminating any harm and not punishment of the infringer you realize that the laws can be ridiculous but people can live with it.

On the other hand when people start focusing on punishing others things will get ugly.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Actually, fair use normally would not apply to private material. As this song (or version) was never released, there is little hope of fair use on it. At best, a news program might be able to claim newsworthiness, but even then, it would be a bit of a stretch to use privately owned material in a public broadcast without permission.

Ole Husgaard (user link) says:

Just like some English-speaking people incorrectly use the word “theft” when referring to copyright infringement, some French-speaking people seem to like the word “counterfeiting” to just as incorrectly refer to copyright infringement. The reason, of course, is that some people want to have non-commercial file sharing punished the same was as for example the sale of fake medicines that can cost lives.

French copyright law does not have the concept of “fair use”. But there is an explicit right of citation in the law. This means that people can cite a part of a copyrighted work without permission, if they properly attribute the creators of the work. I think this is the case here.

French copyright law also has moral rights. And it looks to me like Carla Bruni is trying this approach by now claiming that the recording was a draft version and that citing from it violates her moral rights.

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