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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).
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
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 ...)