France to Legalize File Sharing 446
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).
Wording?? (Score:3, Informative)
FYI (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think it's really significative
Oh! Yea Right! (Score:1, Informative)
France is going to outlaw free software but legalize piracy? Yea right! There's not much worse than frog loving pirates.
Not yet fully voted (Score:2, Informative)
The government is now trying today to reverse this vote, or at least to ask every internet user to pay a tax (to download freely, but not to upload). If this seems familiar to the cd/dvd tax, you are not too far...
Let's not make any conclusion and wait till tomorrow to know the real decision (Probably not as catchy as this news' title)
Re:Could've been said better? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:3, Informative)
"Legal music downloading sites such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes have French-language sites, as do major music companies such as Vivendi Universal SA. Last night's amendment would allow someone having bought a song from one of those sites to share it with family or friends."
I still think that general peer to peer networks a'la Kaaza would be in hot water. What I think the law is trying to get at is the stopping of the draconian DRM law that takes away fair use. Many of the online music shops have music that only certain computers can run. This law addon says, "Hey you bought, you can share it like you would a CD among family and friends".
Political situation in France (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [slashdot.org] 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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Bad idea... (Score:1, Informative)
Remember that RMS's philosophy is not only that you should have the right to share information you want to share, but that you should have a responsibility to share information others want you to share.
There's a reason why the GPL concentrates on the inclusion of source code. In a world without copyright, there would be nothing to stop you taking GPL software, modifying it, and giving copies away - for free - without source code. And RMS would not want you doing that.
Re:Contradicting News... (Score:0, Informative)
The two amendements voted last night go against this repressive measure. Mr Bloche, a socialist deputy (left-wing) bashed this all-repressive govt attitude and propositions for about an hour and a half. The repression has not been voted. The whole governement project, voted as "emergency" just before Christmas (when nobody's present) has failed, and lead to the legalization of file sharing, considered "personnal, private copy".
Thanks a lot to the socialists for this move !
Re:Wording?? (Score:3, Informative)
I can understand why that would be confusing for Americans, though. Hope that helps.
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:3, Informative)
But hey, whatever one needs to say to make one's point...
Re:It will not pass. (Score:2, Informative)
The law in question is that DMCA equivalent. That's kind of the point - the deputies placed an amendment on the bill to completely change the spirit of it, as a protest against its restrictions.
Ce n'est pas une légalisation du P2P (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:5, Informative)
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 ...)
Not everyone (Score:3, Informative)
I dont think this legalizes public file sharing... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:2, Informative)
Also note that the fee will not have to be paid by everbody, only to those declaring that they use p2p software.
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:3, Informative)
TFA says:
The amendment, which is attached to a bill on intellectual property rights, states that ``authors cannot forbid the reproduction of works that are made on any format from an online communications service when they are intended to be used privately'' and not for commercial use.
I am no copyright lawyer, but somewhere it does not seem for the inverse to make sense. Meaning, how could authors forbid the reproduction of works that are intended to be used privately? But this also kills the entire notion of copyright altogether. The GPL appears to be null and void in France now, even though it has never been "proven in court" anyway.
What does copyright actually mean? How is it binding? Can I say at the bottom of this post:
(C) 2006 by hackstraw
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this post, but changing it is not allowed. If you read this post twice (copying it from the computer to your brain more than one time), I am therefore explicitly granted the right to kill your gerbil if I see fit.
Everything but the last sentence was taken from the FSF's copyright on the GPL. To me, that statement seems like an EULA, and what validity do either of those have?
Another thing, is I'm confused after this [slashdot.org] stuff [slashdot.org] that [slashdot.org] has come from France in the not so recent past.
Re:France are weird (Score:4, Informative)
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 [slashdot.org] 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.
Re:Ah, the further Socialization of entertainment. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Serves them right for pushing their luck. (Score:4, Informative)
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-
Re:I hereby suspend my France-Bashing for 24 hours (Score:3, Informative)
Not my half-cocked crusade, mate. Bush won by less than 3%. Nearly half of us over here know he's a lying bastard.
Life in Pre-Revolutionary America is an interesting experience.
thanks (Score:3, Informative)
We'll see in January what happens