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France Moving Forward on Legalized P2P

Posted by Zonk on from the riaa-gnashes-teeth dept.

Romerican writes "Over a month ago, Slashdotters joked about France's efforts to legalize P2P. Originally dismissed as a trivial coup by a small group, the French government continues to entertain the topic. News.com is reporting the French Minister of Culture will advocate P2P as a flat-fee service." From the article: "The draft law, which originally aimed to tackle online piracy, is backed by consumer groups in France but heavily opposed by such companies as Vivendi Universal, which owns Universal Music, the world's biggest record company, and a stake in film and TV company NBC Universal. French cinema and music trading associations together with rock stars such as Johnny Hallyday have spoken out against the law, arguing it would kill their work. "

5 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. French Governoment not so keen about P2P by chevanne · · Score: 3, Informative

    French laws issue related to P2P are related at http://www.ratatum.com/ Check in particular http://www.ratiatum.com/news2755_DADVSI_remaniemen t_du_texte_vers_moins_de_sanctions.html (in French, sorry)

    Basically:
    * Just before Chrismas, the government has attempted to vote a law allowing more sanction against P2P
    * Some parlement members (both left&right) has decided to modify the law in a direction allowing P2P if a flat fee is paid by the user ("license globale")
    * This modification has been voted
    * The leader from both political party UMP (government) and PS (opposition) are against this modification of the law
    * The goverment want to modify against the law, to remove what has been added in december and to ask the parlement to revote, but with less sanctions as before : 38 Euro in case of infrigement (~ 45$)
    * Both side are trying to petition the public. In particular the media company are pushing the artist to says that "Allowing P2P will kill artistic creation"

    Now, the debate around this law is very alive in French media, which is a good thing IMHO, because it will be very difficult to make a very restrictive laws.
    The new law will contains also provisiond enforcing "fair use" (or "private copy" in French), i.e. to allow to bypass DRM to allow interop (between iTune and some MP3 players for example).

  2. Re:Who??? by masklinn · · Score: 2, Informative

    French rock singer, one of the best-selling french artists with Aznavour with around 200 million albums sold worldwide during his (nearly 50 years long now) career. As of 2005, he's cranked out 1000 songs, 400 tours (for ~25 millions spectators), 18 platinum albums and 1 diamond album. He also participated in 29 films and around 80 books have been written on him.

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  3. Re:Once again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    So only the english spelling of the country (iraq) is the proper one. In several other languages (swedish comes to mind) the name of the country is actually Irak, with a K not a Q. But I guess when you can't find something to bitch about you grasp at straws.

  4. I'd pay $6 per month... by Panaphonix · · Score: 3, Informative

    Under a system proposed by Harvard University Professor Terry Fisher:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal _downloads/

  5. Re:Once again... by NotFamousYet · · Score: 2, Informative

    Irak is the french spelling for Iraq.