Piracy: In the name of the law
At the end of a three-month period full of controversy and twists and turns, the French deputies will vote today on the final version of the proposed law on author’s rights. Including the prickly subject of Internet downloading and the copying of private material, the study of the text by Cultural Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres was abruptly halted at the end of December by the government, following a surprise vote by deputies legalising no-limits downloading on the Internet in exchange for a concessionary remuneration for authors.
Rejected by a new vote, this shot-down global licence has, however, forced the Minister to review the content, which reduced sanctions against surfers with a €38 fine in the case of single illegal download and €150 for downloads intended to be made available "peer to peer". This fine has now increased to €750 for sharers or users of a programme designed to bypass technical measures protecting against illegal downloading (MTP-DRM), €750 for hackers of MTP and €30,000 (and 6 months in prison) for those who sell the means to bypass the systems.
As for legally acquired private copies, a commission of three experts was set up and will decide on the number of copies authorized for download through this method. However, any DVD copying will be outlawed following a decision by the court, which, in the battle against piracy, came down on the side of video publishers trying to protect their DVDs against all form of copying.
However, the new version of the law introduced the concept of "inter-operability", in other words, the possibility for a surfer who has legally downloaded a digital file to read and copy it to the destination of his choice without being technically blocked. This openness is not to the liking of companies such as Apple (with its music tracks downloadable at iTunes), VirginMega and FnacMusic, and also affects the burgeoning Video On Demand systems. This detail perfectly illustrates a thorny new problem: the law exists but has still to be applied, which should prove to be highly complicated.
(Translated from French)
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