The Montpellier Court of Appeals ruled that there was nothing wrong with downloading music from the internet.
A man who was sued by publishing companies (Buena Vista, Columbia, Disney and most of the other majors). Why? Among the 488 CDs he owns, one third of them were downloaded from “internet sites”.
The court applied the article L. 122-5 of the French Intellectual Property code, which reads:
Once a work has been disclosed, the author may not prohibit:
1°. private and gratuitous performances carried out exclusively
within the family circle;
2°. copies or reproductions reserved strictly for the private use
of the copier and not intended for collective use…
Because there was no evidence of collective use, and because the owner of the CDs watched some of them “with one or two friends”, the court ruled there was no violation of the article L. 122-5. The decision does not mention if the sites from which the files were downloaded were P2P systems or websites.
Decision here http://www.juriscom.net/documents/camontpellier20050315.pdf
(PDF) or here http://www.juriscom.net/jpt/visu.php?ID=650 (abstract)
From Cederic Manara