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Demonstrators in Paris have protested against proposed laws which will make online file-sharing illegal in France. The law, being debated by the French Senate, will ban the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted files. Around 300 people laid a wreath "in memory of private copying and free software in France" near the city's culture and communications ministry. It follows a decision by the government in March to scrap a bill to legalise downloading in return for a flat fee. The draft copyright law introduces fines of between 38 and 150 euros (£26-£104) for people pirating music or movies at home.
Apple, which runs the iTunes music store, has criticised the draft law for the opposite reason. The law calls upon Apple and rivals Sony and Microsoft to share their proprietary copy-protection - to ensure that digital music can be played on any player, regardless of its format or source.
Leading lawmakers have agreed to water down a draft law that could have threatened the future of the iPod in France.The National Assembly had voted in March to force Apple Computer Inc. and other companies to make their music players and online stores compatible with rivals, but key members now say they have agreed to weaker measures endorsed by senators.Currently, tunes purchased at Apple's iTunes Music Store won't play on music players sold by Apple rivals. Likewise, an Apple iPod can't play songs bought on Napster Inc. or other rival music stores. Critics have called the restrictions anti-competitive and anti-consumer.The draft adopted by the Assembly, France's lower house, contained a blanket demand that companies share their exclusive copy-protection technologies with rivals, effectively free of charge.But the compromise, due to be approved Thursday by a committee of legislators from both houses, maintains a Senate loophole that could allow Apple and others to sidestep that requirement by striking new deals with record labels and artists.
Majority members of the joint committee of the lower house and the Senate passed a proposal that would support the principle that products bought on one digital platform would have to be compatible with different digital players.But it would create a regulatory body which would have the power to decide technical details, settle disputes and oversee copyright control over goods sold online.Critics, including one of France's leading consumer groups CLCV, say the regulatory body would allow the big operators like Apple and Microsoft to sidestep or limit the impact of so-called "interoperability" rules.The proposal was backed by members of the ruling UMP party but was denounced by the opposition Socialists on the committee, who walked out of the meeting in protest at a procedural measure that will stop a second reading in parliament.The bill will be put to the vote in parliament next week without a second reading after the Minister of Culture declared the issue a matter of urgency.Socialist deputies said the proposal would fail to ensure true interoperability and represented a climbdown in the face of corporate interests."It is a form of capitulation before Apple and Microsoft, the two information technology giants which will henceforth be free to control the diffusion of culture," Socialist deputy Christian Paul said in a statement.The head of UMP's parliamentary group Bernard Accoyer said the proposal was a "balanced text" that would ensure copyright was observed while boosting consumer rights."In future it will not be possible to prevent a consumer from playing any work bought legally on any system," he said.
The "iPod law" became closely associated with Apple Computer and its iTunes Music Store, and could have forced Apple to license its FairPlay DRM for competing devices and services. Not surprisingly, Apple was against this, to the point of possibly shutting down the iTMS in France. Again not surprisingly, as corporations like Apple Computer and Vivendi Universal made their displeasure known, the law was substantially altered, though the basic concept of "DRM neutrality" was not completely eradicated.The "DRM neutrality" provision was not struck down, rather a company cannot be forced to license their DRM without compensation. The question then becomes one of whether the DRM regulatory authority will force Apple, and others, to do just that.Another controversial aspect of the law found unconstitutional concerned the effective decriminalizing of copyright infringement through file sharing. DADVSI originally intended to make file sharing subject to a fine, 150 Euros or so, but instead that amount can go up to 300,000 Euros, not too mention up to three years in prison. Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal director for the Association of Audionautes, puts the best possible face on the ruling."By eliminating the reduced penalties, the council put ordinary people sharing music back in the same league as criminal counterfeiters," Soufron said. "I guess the good news is that we will have a chance to defend ourselves in court, unlike under the system with simple fines."
French legislation that had caused an uproar for its approach to iTunes has finally entered the statute books--but the controversy continues. The law now in force is a watered-down version of a bill that had initially threatened to outlaw Apple Computer's practice of using digital rights management technology with purchases made on the iTunes Music Store. Apple's rivals can now request information necessary to make their services and MP3 players interoperable with iTunes and iPods, but Apple must be compensated.
Under a plan that would compensate artists through a surcharge on Internet service provider fees, a group aims to make France the first country to legalize file-sharing.The Association des Audionautes, an organization of 6,000 Web junkies that has made peer-to-peer file-sharing an issue in France's upcoming presidential electionRidouan's system would work much the same way: ISPs would charge a few extra euros per month and grant users a license for unlimited P2P downloading.The major music companies equate Ridouan's proposal with legitimizing piracy, but they don't mention they collect more than two-thirds of every dollar from online and CD sales. Under such a licensing scheme, they could get just one-fourth.Ridouan has won many over to his cause – including one of France's two leading presidential candidates – by appealing to the French love of culture as something beyond mere product
"Under the newly adopted, very controversial DADVSI French law, it became illegal to bypass, help bypass, or suggest one bypasses DRM protections. Offenders are liable of up to a € 30,000 fine ($38,000) and six months in prison. Three DRM activists went, accompanied by a cheerful crowd of supporters, to their local police station and admitted the following:" Stéphane used DVDdecrypter to transfer a legally purchased DVD onto his portable DVD player, and risks a € 3,750 fine; Tangui read a DVD on an open-source Linux software; Jérôme bypassed DRMs on music legally purchased on iTunes and another French online provider, explained how to bypass DRMs on a web page, and translated a software that gets rid of protections on digital content; for all that, he risks a € 30,000 fine and up to six months in prison."
It took more than 10 minutes to persuade the Paris police station’s highest-ranking officer that a crime might have taken place, but that did not deter Jérôme Martinez and his two companions.Among their crimes was listening to a song purchased from iTunes on a device not made by Apple Computer. The group, StopDRM, largely made up of young computer enthusiasts, was protesting the growing number of subtle restrictions used to limit the use of legally purchased songs and videos. Protection measures, often called digital rights management, or DRM, are supposed to prevent piracy. But critics of the measures say they smack of Big Brother-style controls
