RSSFrance to Discuss File Sharing Law
By Ed Oswald | Published February 3, 2006, 4:19 PM
An inquiry into the French file sharing law that was passed late last year making peer-to-peer networks legal will be discussed at a hearing held by the Commission for Cultural Affairs and Commission for Economic Affairs. France's Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres will appear at the hearing.
The law would legalize the sharing of music and films as long as a flat fee of several euros per month is paid. Even with the promise of some compensation for file swappers' activities, the record industry says such a plan would undo years of work to combat piracy.
The proposal has received the backing of consumer groups in France, but French entertainment companies like Vivendi Universal have come out in strong opposition to the law. The industry has even called on French pop stars to speak out against the plan publicly.
The back and forth between supporters and detractors of the law began in December when the French government proposed new sanctions of 300,000 euros and a three-year jail term for those convicted of file sharing.
Parliament fired back shortly thereafter, adding amendments to legalize file sharing as long as users paid a fee to the French government. However, legal analysts say that even if the law is eventually passed, it could violate European Union regulations on copyright and may be invalid anyway.
Opponents of the law say that a flat-rate fee would also undercut the burgeoning legal digital music business in France, and would not generate enough revenue to compensate the record companies and their artists.
Here's a concept- I make a product, I sell it to you, I get remuneration, you keep the product for your personal use, because that’s what we've agreed (that’s copyright folks).
The idea of the 'Consumer' organisations that you should all be able to share and enjoy all the music (that would never get made if the artist doesn’t get paid) sounds like it was dreamed by 'those commy b**tards' don't you think? eh Yanks?
The French proposal will never come to fruition, as it breaches EU law, which supersedes national law.
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|You are wrong. It has nothing to do with communism. The tax allowing to share products is needed to put capitalism back in charge because '68 people, socialists and true communists have replaced capitalism with a fake one over the last 30 years or so and that's the reason why prices keep raising instead of falling, they always cry to be poor and demand more and more money and laws against people to politicians.
The infamous Microsoft policy of spying on people with the Windows Product Activation has been spread over the industry in the last 2-3 years, Microsoft keeps getting bigger like no other Company or Corporation before it. When a monopoly was estabilished in the telcos market in the USA, Reagan and the Republicans split that up to give back to the market some true competition, capitalism and falling prices. Microsoft keeps estabilishing monopolies, destroying smaller business activity, spy on both the competition and consumers like it was a secret agency. This is not good. And in fact the market suffers and it's going to collapse with the insane nazist/communist/big-brother DRM thing.
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|Reminds me of the movie Brazil. No matter what the governments do, someone will always make a living (or hobby) out of circumventing it so that the poorest can still benefit from the enjoyment of what the government subsidizes mainly for the wealthy. It doesn't matter what is right or wrong in that respect, it's like water running downhill, it will just happen because it follows the path of least resistance (or discomfort).
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|Oh, please.. for the poors ? Geez! That's a communistic '68s propaganda...
No profit copying and sharing between people occours not because people are so poor that can't buy the products, and we are not talking about what you need to eat to live which could be understood (people under totalitarisms had to fight to be able to eat enough to live...), but it occours because those selling the products keep committing frauds and have no clue about what true capitalism is all about. They keep raising prices and want governements to use military and police forces over the population to give them some market share and oblige people to buy the products. Well, this shows that current '68s managers leading the majority of multinational groups surely have a totalitaristic communistic mentality and can't play in a free market, can't think about ways to please their potential customers by lowering prices as much as possible first, they prefer cheating on people and stealing from them.
No, governments must not obey to these thieves, they have to obey the basic laws of capitalism and stop requesting law enforcement on the population to sell what they produce. If they weren't the thieves they keep showing the whole world to be they would simply drop prices to a point at which 90% of the population would will to buy the original.
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|Fact of the matter is , dont share files just buy them. France it must be said (the goverment) are linke high on onions and garlic with this proposal
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|The idea of a flat fee/tax on all Internet connections to legalize the sharing of any possible pirated copies was proposed and theorized in the USA some years ago but the infamous MPAA,RIAA,BSA did their best to raise prices, put in jail some citizens and claim to be poor victims. If they would put their products at right prices there would be no piracy or no more than a 5-10%. Instead the market is so out of control that prices keep increasing further. It's insane that the Windows license costs one third to half the average monthly salary of people in many countries.
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|In the US too.
This should be viewed as a good thing.
Then i can download without worrying
about Big Brother (see 1984).
1984 is a book about life in the future
from 1940's Britain.
Copyright my a**
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|An American is having breakfast, in Paris, one morning (coffee, croissants, bread, butter and jam) when a Frenchman, chewing bubble-gum, sits down next to him. The American ignores the Frenchman who, nevertheless, starts a conversation.
Frenchman: "You American folk eat the whole bread??"
American (in a bad mood): "Of course."
Frenchman: (after blowing a huge bubble) "We don't. In France, we only eat what's inside. The crusts we collect in a container, recycle it, transform them into croissants and sell them to the states." The Frenchman has a smirk on his face.
The American listens in silence.
The Frenchman persists: "Do you eat jelly with the bread??"
American: "Of Course."
Frenchman: (cracking his bubble-gum between his teeth and chuckling).
"We don't. In France we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds, and leftovers in containers, recycle them, transform them into jam, and sell the jam to the states."
After a moment of silence, The American then asks: "Do you have sex in France?"
Frenchman: "Why of course we do", he says with a big smirk.
American: "And what do you do with the condoms once you've used them?"
Frenchman: "We throw them away, of course."
American: "We don't. In America, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into bubble-gum, and sell them to France."
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|lmao *off topic* good joke hahha
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|Haha!
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|As a shock to many people, the United States does NOT rule the world. Many here seem to have the idea that the laws here should be the same everywhere.
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|...
"As a shock to many people, the United States does NOT rule the world"
...
That's obvious by the fact of innane and nonsensical laws in France.
At some point we're going to have to invade France like we did Afghanistan. And set-up the RIAA as the interim government there.
...
The Computer Rodent
...
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|You're creepy. Not with what you say, but with your huge formatting.
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|...
"You're creepy. Not with what you say, but with your huge formatting."
...
What's even more creepy is that the PC Rat can actually spell ...unlike most people here.
...
The Computer Rodent
...
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|LMAO!
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|Yeah, that's true. :P
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|Despite what all the file-sharers around here will say, this is NOT a good thing. Artists and Record Companies still produce a product, and as it is their intellectual property, they should be allowed to sell it. I agree that most Record Companies are overly greedy and charge extortionate rates for music, but that still does not give anyone the right to steal music. Even if a country taxes people to "allow" this, it is injust. Who knows how much (if any) the recording industry will get from this tax - it is up to the seller to decide the cost of the music, not the government.
I do not agree with the infection of music downloads or CDs with DRM technology, but I fully respect the rights of artists to sell their music. I am totally against illegal file sharing, and there is absolutely no excuse to do so, even if you are a government struggling for votes. As far as I can tell, this move by the French has two motives:
1) Get votes from younger people;
2) Piss off the Americans via their music industry.
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|I've love for Canada to follow in their footsteps. Pissing off the music industry is sweet!
Or even better...make downloading TV shows(publicly viewable for free), free and legal! At least that wouldn't piss off the artists, and if it's already being shown for free, why isn't it freely downloadable?
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|IMO if you charge $20.00 for a CD you're just asking for it. Same for software, if your carging $500 for a product key (techinacally you don't even own the CD =P) for microsoft office, or $120+ for a Win XP Home CD, or $5,000 for 3ds Max, Cinema 4d, Maya, $1000 for Studio 8, $2000 for ArcView or AutoCAD. Don't you think that's a little bit extragent? What are you paying for? R&D? Parcially. Advertising? Again, partially. For a new Headquarters and multi-million dollar a year salleries? Yeah, Mostly. Do you really think it costs that much to devolop software, or music? I don't. Maybe software. Not music. Even with state of the art equpiment I don't think that could cost more than 1.0 Mil. (I have absolutly no idea on that fiugre, I'm not into the music industry.) Then advertising, maybe a few Mil there. Then what? The rest is profit. Its very lucritive.
Does that nessecarrly justify priacy? Well, no. Artists do derserve to be paid. But millions a year because they can play a musical instrument? Its only logical that people percipitate in such acts. Also, who says p2p is completly illegal. Lets say I make a Word file? Is that illegal to share? No. There are legal uses for p2p. It can really cut down on the bandwidth bill each month.
/rant
I apolgize for the spelling. I don't haven't installed my spell check extension yet. =(
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|Although behind the French law surely are communistic point of views and people against the USA, the same tax proposal was theorized in the USA some years ago and it's the only way to ensure that citizens don't become slaves of out-of-control false-capalistic groups like Microsoft with the insane DRM which would make Microsoft more powerful than FBI, CIA and NSA together.
The concept of fraud has been totally lost, more and more businesses put insane prices on software and expect to be able to use force against anyone that tries to make a copy without paying for it. That's insane.
Capitalism it's not socialism nor totalitarism, these '68s managers in multinational groups keep pushing a false capitalism that wants them to be allowed to use the force on people so that they buy their products. This is not the way capitalism works, at all. They should keep their products prices lower instead of keep raising prices claiming this and that silly thing. If they fail at selling they can only blame themselves.
Keeping cheap prices ensures the majority of people would love to buy the original instead of looking for copies from friends or on the internet.
And anyway, despite the insane prices their profits are still huge, they might have lost a 15-20% of revenues due to piracy/copies/sharing in the last few years but that's nothing compared to how much they raised their prices with no real reason.
Production costs are surely lower than many years ago, and it's insane that software costs more than hardware.
Based on people like those at Microsoft an Intel or AMD CPU or the new Cell CPU should cost at least $15,000 if not $50,000 to the end user considering how high production costs are.
The problem here is that software, audio and video producers keep committing frauds and need to be stopped stealing money from people.
A free market doesn't mean that committing frauds is legit, it's not at all.
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|Some read The Sun and some others The Times...
Thank you, gentlemen. Always interesting to have insight information of our beloved neighbours!
Well, French seem to be handling the file sharing problem in a traditional manner: constructive dialog rather than war. Besides democracy, another aspect of a civilized world.
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|Maybe you should keep in mind that those at MPAA,RIAA,BSA and such are all Democratic, anti-Bush people. The majority of them are not Republicans nor NeoCons at all.
Your anti-Bush theory fails.
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|Dirrty_Harry people like you are what make this world bad, you single out a hole group of people believing that they are all "damn ignorance and arrogance". I bet 2 things
1: You have not even met a French person.
2: You have not even been to France.
Yet you still say that. You should stop reading newspapers and watching the news and take a trip to France then make you mind up and even if the people you do meet there are indeed ignorant and arrogant, that is still not all 63 million French is it?
I think you will find that what you said is racist, look in any English dictionary for racist ad you will find
"Discrimination or prejudice based on race"
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|French people is a race people?????
What a concept!!!!!
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|I've heard(though I have not been to France) that Parisians are the most arrogent, and give that label to the rest of the country.
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|The only people who don't like the French are the Bush fanboys.
But then again they don't like anyone who opposes their beloved Bush.
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|I am not so sure. I have a cousin and he is a naturalised French, living in Paris. I spent almost 3 months in Paris.
I would say that in almost every country the inhabitants of capitals seem to be the most arrogant. Maybe except the States where New Yorkers "enjoy" the opinion of being the most arrogant (which is IMO not fair).
Anyway, beware of stereotypes. Germans are not necessarily Nazis, Latin Americans drug dealers, Poles stupid, Americans narrow minded. These doubtful qualities are pretty well distributed in the world.
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|Very true; there's dim-wits in every city, wherever it might be. I thought Texas was supposed to be the most arrogent state, but I suppose it's more the state and corporations than the people. I know a few people(3) from there, and none are terribly arrogent.
I think if I were ever interviewed on TV about my knowledge of the world, I would be quite sorry representation for Canada. My knowledge of computers, on the other hand, would be very inspiring; but who from other countries is interested in that? :P
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|my dislike of the french has nothing to do with bush.
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|It's the commies and pro-communism people that hate Bush, the Republicans, the Neocons and any Right Wing political party in the world that dares opposing to the current socialistic/communistic '68s people world domination.
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|"Discrimination or prejudice based on race"
Race?
You mean the French aren't Human?
roflmao.. Good one, ya friggin' French-hater.
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|You forget those who hate EVERYONE equally regardless of race, gender, sex, nationality, species, sexual preference, age, or IQ below 140.
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|lol i always hated french people because of their damn ignorance and arrogance and them always believing that they werent treated fairly.
but this is their first good idea ... since ...
ill get back to that point some other time
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|*but this is their first good idea ... since ...*
French Bread and Wine. . . .
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