Last week we saw that a French court upheld the contract a consumer adopts when purchasing a DVD, and ruled that studios aren't guilty of breaking French law when they protect DVDs with DRM (see here and here). Now it seems that the French Parliament may step back from a perilous decision made last December that seriously threatened the well-being of French artists.

Agence France Presse reports that many in the French government were infuriated by a bill that would have allowed unlimited downloading from peer-to-peer file sharing in exchange for paying a small fee each month; that fee theoretically would go to artists:

But that decision - made during a late-night session debating the original version of the digital copyright bill - stunned the government and drew an angry campaign of protest from famous French singers, such as veteran rocker Johnny Hallyday.

The government withdrew the original bill, thus stopping the MPs' vote making its way through the legislative process, and amended it slightly to lighten fines for illegal downloading and to allow people to make private copies of DVDs and CDs.

Note who protested here -- French singers. Artists. But as I mentioned recently in Artists and Culture: Empowering the Former to Foster the Latter, those seeking more access to content without using the market to do so often overlook the artist, or create a bogeyman to take aim at instead. Take French MP Nicholas Dupont-Aignan, who supported the taking of artists' rights and their replacement with a pittance of a download fee. He told the AFP reporter that the freedom currently enjoyed by web-users was under attack from big companies looking to ensure their profitability.

Okay. So illegal downloading of music is a "freedom," and a for-profit distributor looking for, well, profit, is attacking those downloaders (I hesitate to call them "consumers" because while they are consuming the music, the term usually refers to paying customers). Note that Mr. Dupont-Aignan didn't say anything about the singers who have slowed up his legislation. Those artists know his compulsory license model would be a disaster; for more see Why Government Can't Be Trusted With Trust Funds: A 118-Year-Old Case Study Highlighting the Dangers of Compulsory Licensing.

The legislation has been revised, but still needs work. It proposes reduced fines for illegal downloading -- a mere 38 euro for first offendors -- and provisions to permit people to make private copies of DVDs and CD. If the French government legalizes DVD-ripping, that would seem to run completely counter to its recent court ruling respecting such protection.

France isn't exactly known for its free market. But that should play in the favor of French artists. The rest of the world is continually perturbed by French protectionism (PepsiCo, keep your hands off of Danone!). Well, who better to protect than French artists? Would they rather have French citizens embracing talented Americans instead?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:18 PM | Free Culture Movement, International, Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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