Bar Barella: French Judge and BBC vs Big Media

The BBC and the French. Watch out Big Media, something is stirring in the heart of old Europe. Who better to support the Creative Commons, sensible copyright regimes and freeing up citizen creativity than institutions from the heart of Old, lefty, “unproductive” Europe…

The powerful president of the French magistrates union has begun to openly advocate decriminalizing online trading in copyrighted works for personal use.

“We are in the process of creating a cultural rupture between a younger generation that uses the technologies that companies and societies have made available, such as the iPod, file download software, peer-to-peer networks, etc.,” Judge Dominique Barella told Wired News. “It’s like condemning people for driving too fast after selling them cars that go 250 kmh.” Bruce Gain for Wired.

Meanwhile over with Auntie:

“America’s entertainment industry is committing slow, spectacular suicide, while one of Europe’s biggest broadcasters — the BBC — is rushing headlong to the future, embracing innovation rather than fighting it.

Unlike Hollywood, the BBC is eager and willing to work with a burgeoning group of content providers whose interests are aligned with its own: its audience.” Cory Doctorow for Wired.

Having said all that, BBC employees are currently striking, which is the other side of leftism.

Wait – isn’t the BBC Big Media? Yes, but is also Public Media. It’s doing some very interesting things, that should make arch nemesis Rupert worry.

Of course two pieces of evidence don’t make a trend, but its interesting to see that leftist Euro populism in this context. Some interesting alliances can potentially emerge.

While I am on the subject, I keep hearing people say Europe isn’t innovative in software. That rubbish: Linux, mySQL and OpenOffice – recognize any of those? Europe may not have made money off of these platforms, but they also weren’t American inventions (yes i know developers from around the world made contributions to these platforms). Or is the argument that these are just “open source knock-offs”… Oh yeah – the guys that built the code that Eclipse is based on were Swiss, as far as i know. Go figure. Europeans may not be able to “innovate”, but these projects have all fundamentally changed the game in our industry.