Very cool, if true

Just wondering why you wouldn't use Spotify for that? It'd make a lot more sense, if it's something you're pretty sure you won't want a permanent copy of, to just stream it legally as many times as you want, rather than download it illegally...

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France has draconian copyright laws that block both that site and Pandora. (Though there was a six month window when we could use Pandora before French officials realized what it was.)

The good news is that their copyright laws don't extend to videos, so I can hear any song I want to on YouTube, but that's not helpful if I want to hear an entire album. (The law itself confuses me because it does block Hulu.)

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Are you sure about that? Spotify themselves certainly seem to think they operate in France... - http://www.spotify.com/fr/about/features/ . Is this maybe some insane policy of your ISP, rather than French law?

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Well, I've tried on several ISPs (because I don't want to always work from home) and they all deliver the "This Content Is Not Available In Your Country" message.

It could be that the various ISPs are terrified of getting fined (since they did get fined over Pandora.)

The French government has made it very clear in many, many news articles that they consider streaming music to be against the law.

The various organizations that regulate music licensing in France tend to behave like rabid dogs.

One of my friends owns a bar and pays the 1,000 euros a year to have the right to play downloads and CDs in his bar. He mostly does so by linking his iPod to the bar's sound system - and he still gets those guys in a couple times a year to inspect his iPod and make sure that all the music on it was legally purchased.

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That's terribly odd, because Spotify is legal - they license the music properly.

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They might not license it properly in France where it is considerably harder to do so than in the rest of the world.

France doesn't considering it legally licensed for use in France simply because it's been legally licensed in the United States. You have to go through their endless bureaucracy (which is why when a new bar opens in France you often won't hear any music inside it for the first six months or so that it's open.)

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No, seriously, they're part-owned by a bunch of music labels, and their big selling point is that they're entirely legitimate. They've licensed music in the areas that they exist in, which is why they're only available in about 6 countries (the USA isn't one of them, as they're still sorting the licensing issues there).

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Then Free and Orange may just not want to deal with it.

It's France, I'm used to things not making sense.

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skington.livejournal.com

I'm with Orange in France here (Périgueux), and I get French-language ads on Spotify. So must be your particular ISP.

Although it complains that I'm not in the location I've specified in my profile (I'm in Scotland most of the time), so that might be it.

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And I can't find any reference to Spotify being blocked in France. Very odd.

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I don't know what to say. My entire experience with Spoofify has been people on Facebook telling me I should try it, me going to the site and it telling me to fuck off.

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I'm baffled :->

Oh well, should you ever visit Edinburgh I'll show off the marvels that are denied you :->

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No, they definitely *do* license it properly in France, but *don't* license it for the US. They've got licensing agreements in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the UK.
I've tried googling and found no evidence at all that Spotify is illegal in France, and plenty of sites talking about them operating there perfectly legally...

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Then the Montpellier ISPs are fucked up.

I wonder if some asshat in the Langedoc prefecture for some reason doesn't understand them and just told them to block it down here.

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Entirely possible. And absolutely disgusting... Maybe you should complain to your ISP? I certainly would, if mine were blocking legit sites (or indeed non-legit ones for that matter...)

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There is no point in complaining to any company in France ever.

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That's... absolutely bizarre...
Pandora's slightly different because they've only ever legally operated in the US, so I can see why that would happen, but as far as Spotify goes I can't see any reason why it would be a problem. If they're going to criminalise the easiest and simplest way to *stop* people filesharing, then I can't even begin to imagine what their thought process is...

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Nobody understands the thought process of French bureaucrats.

I think part of it is that you not only have to get permission from the French government, but before the government will sign off on it you also have to get permission from the four or five unions that represent international artists in France.

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It might help you understand if you knew that the licensing issue here isn't to distribute the money to the artists themselves, but to distribute the money in the form of pensions for buskers when they retire (and for any other French citizen who claims they made the bulk of their income during their working years playing music.)

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marrog.livejournal.com

A thought which in principle I find quite nice. France seems to me, from my limited knowledge of its infrastructure, to be a heady combination of Good Ideas and Bad Execution.

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