03/07/2006

Following over six months of eventful deliberations in the French Parliament (see news from December 22, 2005, January 10, March 1 and March 21, 2006), the bill on authors’ rights, including rights to digital works, was finally adopted by French ministers this Friday.

Among the measures that come into force are graduated responses, including fines of €38 for Internet users who illegally download films or music and €150 for allowing access to peer-to-peer information. Users who "publish, allow access to or communicate to the public" (including through advertising) software destined for illegal downloading risk a three-year prison sentence along with a fine of €300,000.

Professional cinema organisations in France are satisfied with the results of the vote. In a press release from the SACD (Association of Dramatic Authors and Composers), ARP (Authors, Directors and Producers) highlighted that this text succeeded in being faithful to the principle of the 2001 European directive on the protection of authors’ rights for digital works, while adapting the penalty scale according to the seriousness of the act of piracy.

Holding the view that the law "guarantees and strengthens the basis of the development of legal video-on-demand", the two organisations were more optimistic than the Syndicat de l'Edition Vidéo, who judges "that the measure of fighting against digital piracy does not seem to offer enough guarantees of efficacy", even if they expressed their satisfaction that the new law has not been "exceedingly and dangerously extended" to the law on private copying.

A regulating authority will thus fix the minimum amount of copies authorised according to the type of work (a figure that could easily be zero) and the law on downloading for private use could be limited to works acquired legally.

(Translated from French)