[x-pubpol] Europe’s digital chief hopes France can liberalise digital copyright

[Joly MacFie]

* from may 2, but relevant to next post about new regime in France.


http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/02/europes-digital-chief-hopes-france-can-liberalise-digital-copyright/

By Robert Andrews <http://paidcontent.org/author/robertandrews/> May. 2,
2012

The lawmaker leading Europe’s digital agenda initiatives is hoping France
can liberalise its digital copyright regime, after introducing a policy to
warn and disconnect illegal content downloaders.

France’s Hadopi public agency, created to administer sending of warnings to
alleged freeloaders, sent 755,015 first
warnings<http://paidcontent.org/2012/03/28/419-france-claims-three-strikes-has-hit-piracy-but-has-it-really/>
to
ISP subscribers in its first 14 months of operation. But now it is also
conducting a review of whether France’s underpinning copyright law itself
needs some technical reform.

European Commission digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes
says<http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/hadopi-fr/> she
discovered the review, which she calls a “pioneering work”, “with pleasure”
because:

 “Combating piracy is not done only by coercive measures. You are all, in
fact, aware that *I am not a fan of measures that punish individuals or
families by cutting off internet access*.

“The best way to combat piracy is to encourage the legal supply to satisfy
the legitimate expectations of users. . So we must be very ambitious when
it comes to creating a regulatory framework that promotes the development
of legal offers online.”

Kroes is urging interested French citizens to submit to the review’s
consultation, ending May 15, because: “Every citizen in France – and not
just the artists or companies – *can advise on what would be legitimate
exceptions to the French regime of copyright*, given the current digital
revolution.”

The sub-text of Kroes’ intervention is clear – she would rather focus on
creating the licensing framework conditions to support adoption of legal
services over and above just punishing those who use unlicensed
alternatives.

Many content owners contend this carrot works best in conjunction with the
stick of retribution. European parliamentarians in 2010 voted that
disconnection from ISP services is against the spirit of universal access
they want to maintain.

Kroes adds: “The European Commission also has a positive agenda and *will
soon come with a proposal on collective rights management*, and this year
will also review the 2001 directive on copyright. The exercise led by
Hadopi is therefore very timely.”

Kroes’ team has been doing background work on *simplifying bugbears like
cross-border licensing of content*, in order to drive up accessibility of
and competition between legal online services.

The French review’s focus is on whether certain re-uses of content should
be rendered exempt from being supposed as breaching copyright. That could
include:

   - “temporary copying” intrinsic to streaming
   - format-shifting for private purposes
   - extracting works for educational use
   - introducing broad fair-use exemption.

These technicalities are unlikely to render flagrant copying of whole
copyrighted works legal, however, meaning Hadopi will likely maintain its
primary role.


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/x-pubpol-isoc-ny.org/attachments/20120508/e2da2b40/attachment-0001.htm>