Slashdot Mirror
France to Legalize File Sharing
quenting writes "In the debate around the anti-piracy bill, the French Parliament voted yesterday into law an amendment to the DADVSI bill that allows free sharing of music and movies over the internet, considering the downloaded files as a private copy. This decision goes against the French government and the music industry's recommendations, who argue the deputies only wanted to show their independence from the government. The initial bill's detractors who pushed for this amendment want a tax for author rights to be paid by everyone on the ISP fees." The French government has vowed to fight this decision (babelfish link).
I think they probably could have worded this a little better. They are making it sound like these "deputies" are not a part of the government as the "government" is going to fight them. It is not as if these are some rebels in the foot hills making their own laws.
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
This was made yesterday (21 Dec), during Chrismas holidays. As a consequence, only 58 deputies (out of 577) were present, 30 of them were for a 'global licence', 28 were against...
I don't think it's really significative
No Government refers to the Executive branch, parliament is the legislature. The givernment may be formed by members of the parliament, but that doesn't make the parliament the government - as an opposition members in the parliament would tell you!
The current french government is not really popular, not popular at all even.
:)
The weird thing is that there is no traditional opposition to this government. The left wing is not in good shape at all (since the 2005 elections where Jospin lost to Le Pen (our very own racist nutjob)). Which leads me to my point, these amendments were voted not because they are a Good Thing (tm) (which they are!), but because the UDF (center-right) saw this as a way to strenghten its role as the 'Real Opposition' and gain voters in the 'internet generation' demographics, which is not favorably biased towards them.
But rest assured the current government is backed by very powerful industrials who cherish their fscking IP rights, so these amendments will be vetoed to death, or stealthly removed during the holidays season, just like previous bills have been passed last summer.
I'd like to give my props to the eucd.info/ guys for their actions though, but don't fool yourselves, even the 'good guys' that voted these bills are using us, voters for their very own agenda.
That's the sad truth... or maybe I should stop reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
Abortion isn't legal in the US? I thought that the big hairy deal here was that abortion IS legal.
But hey, whatever one needs to say to make one's point...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I've read the amendments and the law, and the minutes of the debates, and I'm even listening to the current debates right now (and yes, I'm French) and I am not sure at all that this legalizes file sharing. It might possibly make downloading licit, without doubt subject to the payment of a personal copy tax. However it does not legalize uploading at all.
abortion, file sharing, pot smoking, drinking under 21, euthanasia - all legal but in differing countries.
All legal in the Netherlands, plus gay marriage, prostitution, gambling...
Didn't stop us from becoming a bunch of small-minded, anti-intellectual, complaining, intolerant islamophobiacs, so it doesn't really say much. Just means that we like to tax the things we can't stop anyway.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
The law states that the tax will be declarative : you want to copy, you pay the tax, you don't, you pay nothing (but there are chances you'll be monitored a bit ...)
OK some much needed explanation. I have been following all parliament debate over streaming (and I have to use a w32codec ;)).
The things were bad. We were horrified. Our bastard government and so-called "Culture" minister wanted to pass something very much like your Digital Content Security Act along with the transcription of the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) in the "DADVSI" law. So they wanted DRMs to be forced in each "cultural" format and forbid to bypass DRMs. It would have effectively banned all free software that act as a "transmitter" or makes copies because they would have needed them to implement DRMs and force the software editor to prevent people from bypassing the DRMs. However, it's in the 4 fundamental freedoms of free software that people are allowed to modify the source code, so it would have been bad.
The project is in parliament since tuesday. Yesterday, the socialists and communists MEPs (along with very few right-wings) surprised everyone with the approval (59 MEPs, 30 for, 28 against) of the "optionnal global license": those who want to pay 7euros/month will be able to download any music (or movie older than 4 years) from p2p networks, FTP servers, newsgroups, etc. Software is excluded. But the global license removes the need of obligatory DRMs.
Only few amendments (included the global license) was voted yet. The law isn't voted, and it is being (as I watch right now) delayed because this amendment changes pretty much everything. They will certainly do whatever they can to cancel it. However they'll have a hard time doing it. They're trying to remove the amendment as we speech.
A short summary of events:
.fr, and there will probably be some changes in the law before the definitive version is passed. I wouldn't want to bet money on the final outcome.
1) The (gaullist, center-right) government proposes a bill which implements the EU directive on copyright. The proposed bill is essentially a DMCA-light: circumvention of copy-protection devices is forbidden, but the copy-protection systems must allow for legally recognised exceptions to copyright (such as private copies for personal of family use). Note that making a small number of private copies is explicitly legal in France, and we already pay a tax on blank media for this.
2) Two "députés" (representatives), from the main centre-left and centre-right parties, introduce amendments to the effect of mandating "global licensing": introduce a tax on broadband internet access (about 5 to 9 euros per month), in exchange for making unlimited, not-for-profit filesharing legal. The product of this tax is then redistribute to artists (how ? nobody knows). The government voices its opposition to the amendments.
3) The amendments are adopted. This is a very rare event: many members of the gaullist party voted against the wishes of the gaullist government. All parties were divided on the issue, but in the end a majority of lawmakers present at the time supported the amendments. This unexpected rebellion indicates widespread discontent from lawmakers about the bill.
4) The government makes it clear that it wants the amendments rescinded. As the Minister for Culture said, "with the global license system, no one has found an acceptable system of redistribution (for the money collected through the tax)". Media publishers in general oppose the amendments. Artists and rights-collecting societies (French equivalents for the RIAA) are divided, with a majority against them. Consumer associations, however, express clear support.
5) Although the amendments were adopted, the law itself will only be voted on in a few days. In the meantime, the government is expected to exert pressure on the lawmakers (at least on those of the center-right party) to make them reject the amendments. So no, sharing copyrighted material is not yet definitely legal in
Thomas-