[Ecommerce] France schizophrenic on copyright?

[Manon Ress]

France: schizophrenic on intellectual property laws?
12/22/2005 3:28:53 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051222-5827.html

You may think that France has recently gone insane, but depending on
which news sites you read, it could be for different reasons. Two
stories are making waves right now, and neither one is particularly
clear. First, we have claims that the French are turning draconian by
trying to slap DRM on anything and everything. At the same time we
have reports that France has gone libertine, and now approves of all
manner of piracy. How can both be true?

Libert=E9, Egalit=E9, Peetup=E9e?
The French Assembl=E9e Nationale has, in fact, voted to make "P2P
usage" legal in the country (for all intents and purposes, P2P usage
has become shorthand for "unrestricted sharing of music and video
content over public networks"). The approved amendment to the
controversial DADVSI 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."
Additionally, Internet Service Providers would be required to pay a
portion of their revenues to France's rights-representing royalties
body, Sacem.

But despite reports, this does not mean that P2P is legal in France.
The vote would still need to pass in the French Senate, and even
before then, it will probably need a second reading in the lower
house, because the first one was a sham. To put it bluntly, this is a
publicity stunt. The bill, which passed last night by a vote of 30 to
28, saw the remaining 519 deputies absent from the vote. They weren't
there.

Still, the members of the Assembl=E9e Nationale who voted for this will
look populist and fair-minded, but the amendments in question will
never survive the next round.

"The deputies used this vote to show their independence from the
government, but they don't know what they are doing,'' Nicolas
Seydoux, chief executive of French cinema company Gaumont SA, said in
an interview on France Inter radio. "We are not trying to ban
anything, just to make sure the work of others isn't stolen.''

So, while the deputies involved in the first round of voting showed
some sanity with their moves, it's wrong to look at this as evidence
that France is rebelling against EU copyright directives. In fact,
when the filter is adjusted for reality, we see an opposite,
different France altogether.

Ryan Paul has already covered the DADVSI legislation proposed in
France, so I won't rehearse that here. However, the full legislation
is up for vote any time now, and far from being libertine, the
legislation in question could make France one of the most draconian
countries in the free world when it comes to technology law. For
instance, any software that can be used for piracy could land its
developers in trouble, and the law would seek to make DRM
implementation mandatory in practically all software (this, despite
the fact that there is no single DRM solution to begin with!).

And fret not, Americans, for you are not alone in having your
entertainment industry write laws. The French law was apparently
written by powerful players in France, including Vivendi Universal.
Greed and hypocrisy both speak any number of languages.

Put into this context, you can see why some deputies wanted to make a
stand and sneak in a pro-P2P vote. But at the end of the day, it's a
non-starter. With DADVSI, you get a much better idea of where the
country is really headed, and right now, it's not pretty.

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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