Inquiry set for French file-sharing plan

C/Net (Reuters)

France's Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres is set to be questioned about the draft on Wednesday by the parliamentary commission for cultural affairs and the commission for economic affairs.

The project has worried the music, film and television industries because it would make France the first country to allow unlimited peer-to-peer downloading for a flat fee of several euros a month.

File-sharing lets consumers swap songs and movies without paying for them. Some legalized versions of peer-to-peer networks are starting to crop up, including one expected to be launched soon in Germany by Warner Bros.

"We are concerned and monitoring the situation closely," Francine Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry music trade group said on Friday. "But it has a long way to go before it becomes law."

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.

In December, the French government put forward a measure that aimed to clamp down on users sharing pirated material over the Internet by introducing stiffer punishments such as fines of up to 300,000 euros ($362,200) and prison sentences of up to three years.

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.

"Everything we're hearing from the government is that it won't happen," said Geraldine Moloney, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association in Europe.

"If it did, it would have an impact on the film community worldwide, but the whole industry is mobilized against it," she added.

Some legal experts have said the amended draft law, which calls for a "compulsory license" or "global license" could violate European Union intellectual property laws.

"The 'compulsory license' would replace the fast-growing legitimate online market in France by an 'average' payment which would by no means remunerate the creation of music and investments made by the recording industry," the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said.

Story Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

While I think that in the end a Compulsary License scheme of this sort is the closest workable "solution" to the whole copyright war conundrum, AND I feel in my gut that it is what eventually will happen in most of the industrialized "western/democratic/free" nations...

I am still opposed to it AT THIS TIME.

Compulsary licensing would be a HUGE financial boon for the RIAA/MPAA/etcAA. if we implement it before their demise. It would SAVE the corporate oligopoly from the financial doom they deserve due to OUR backlash in the free marketplace.

The fact that more and more of us learn about the evil, get pissed-off, stop buying the RIAA's product is our only true effective leverage against the corporate beast.

If we implement Compulsary Licensing too early, the RIAA labels will gain a huge windfall, (doesn't whether we are downloading their product or sticking to the indie tunes, the ENEMY will get most of the COMPULSARY money!)

Sure, it is good in THEORY, but in PRACTICE, It is STILL too early for the Compulsary License scheme!

The BEAST that steals from the mouth of the true creators must die FIRST!

Only then will it be appropriate/worthwhile to implement!

Hmm .... another problem with compulsory licensing is that you still have to figure out how to divy up the proceeds from the fees. Even if the bulk of the fees end up going to the major copyright holders, how do you decide who gets what royalties, etc? If artist A is file-shared 1,000 more often than artist B, should both still get the same royalties?

Track the downloads for each song, then add all downloads together, divide that number into the total collected, that would give you the value per download, multiply that figure by the numbers of downloads for the song, that should be a just system. If you are down loaded more thenyou make more and to me this gives the artist the incentive to be more
creative and productive.

Yeah, peatrap, I agree that if you are are downloaded more then you (should) make more as an incentive for more creativity. Problem is, it also gives an incentive to get all your buddies to download multiple times just to get your tracker score up (but I suppose it might be possible to ensure that the same download source doesn't get counted more than once for a given downloaded song).

Bufo
Date: February 4, 2006 @ 10:07 AM
Hmm .... another problem with compulsory licensing is that you still have to figure out how to divy up the proceeds from the fees. Even if the bulk of the fees end up going to the major copyright holders, how do you decide who gets what royalties, etc? If artist A is file-shared 1,000 more often than artist B, should both still get the same royalties?

In Poland it's already been solved in the case of radio, tv etc. broadcasting, and even in the case of paid performances of the copyright work: the organizations like ZAIKS (www.zaiks.org.pl), that gather authors and composers (NOT the music industry, but its creators!!) make the statistical research of the usage of pieces (songs, etc.) and reward the authors with the appropriately calculated (assessed?0) fees. As I know, this scheme is very popular in Europe, possibly it's been embraced in all EU countries. Therefore, I think that expanding it to the world of P2P shouldn't be to difficult (especially given, that it's easy to find out WHAT songs are being downloaded, and then, to whom the copyrights belong)

Cheerz,
Critto

I still think the main problems will be too many slices of pie and international concerns.

The first is that there will just be too many companies with equal right to claim a chunk of the levy. The music industry, of course. Also movies. Software. Games. TV, who lose advertising money. Even book-publishing. All will want their piece.

The second is that the files uploaded in France dont nessicarily end up in France. There will be jurisdictional concerns.

The RIAA (SACEM) Antipiracy work is going nowhere anywhay! P2P traffic keep rising of course just like in USA or anywhere in the world but more significantly many judges have rejected their claims and most of the spying companies operating in Europe, such as overpeer are dead in the water at best or going out of business.

Now this! Bye Vivendi/Universal!