France Moving Forward on Legalized P2P

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. "

Comments

HA!

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

...will kill their work...

What, exactly IS thier work. I was under the impression that once a song was written, it tended to stay written. Thus the work is preserved.

perhaps I am naive...

Proven

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it has been stastistically shown (take that with as much salt as you like) that if everyone pays a flat fee, and Nielsen-box equivalents are used, the Entertainment Industry would actually make more money by allowing unlimited downloads via any medium than they get through current means.

In other words, well done the French.

'rock stars such as Johnny Hallyday'

[GungaDan]

So Hasselhoff was unavailable, then?

Beware.

[lynx_user_abroad]

But deputies, both from the ruling conservatives and the opposition Socialists, threw the planned law off course at the end of December by adding amendments that would legalize file-sharing in exchange for a fee to cover a licensing charge.

Understand the mechanics here: If engineered wrong this will simply translate into a tax on internet access for everyone under French jurisdiction, which would be paid to businesses big enough to claim they represent content creators and nothing paid to the actual content creators themselves.

For people who currently observe the law and do not download at all (or only download stuff the copyright owner has given away), this is a tax with no return.

It weakens the rights of authors and hands tax money to the publishers.

But follow me further, if you will: What happens if something like GPL'd software gets included in the definition of content that right now we think will only include songs and music? Would a French company be allowed to re-distribute GPL'd software in violation of the terms of the GPL by claiming this law frees them of the constraints of copyright?

Compulsory licenses are a threat to the Free Culture movement. Copyright is not the problem, copyright violators are the problem.

Once again...

[xutopia]

We joked about France being cowards telling us we shouldn't go to Irak.

Reasons given by France were:

1) no links to Al-Quaeda or 9/11
2) it will cause havoc in the middle east and the rest of the world
3) WMDs aren't present like they used to

Today we still haven't found WMDs, it's clear that Bush and Co lied about Saddam Hussein's ties to Al-Quaeda and it did cause havoc and cost billions.

France now fights for people's rights to use the music they payed for in ways they should be free to do so. They also legitimise the use of the p2p technology rather than attempt to make it illegal like some senators in the US.

Sadly friends it seems the US is falling behind both on a freedom level and a moral level.

So to all those people with their surrender jokes that aren't funny I say at least France isn't selling it's soul. It remains true to Freedom. More so in actions than in speech.

DRM CDs

[MS-06FZ]

So for the love of music and all things musical, go out and buy a massively DRM encumbered CD today! Better yet, buy two...for the alternative is unthinkable!

The advantage of buying two is that it provides a practical way for two people to listen to the music, at the same time! You could even give the second copy to a friend, so that they may listen to their copy whenever they like: but under no circumstances are you to listen to their copy! Your best bet is to bring your own copy with you, and listen to that. This serves two goals. First, it will drown out the sound of your friend's CD, to which you do not have access and which he is not permitted to use as a public exhibition. Second, it will allow you to hear the music to which you otherwise would not have access.