Le Hargh! Online Piracy Legal In France?

Batten down the hatches, Pierre! Looks like the French National Assembly is hoisting the Jolly Roger over the issue of online piracy. Thomas Crampton of the International Herald Tribune reports:

A near-empty midnight session of the French National Assembly proposed this week that France allow peer-to-peer sharing of films and music over the Internet - a move that would legalize in the country what is now considered wholesale piracy in virtually every other nation.

The small group of late-night lawmakers tagged amendments onto an anti-piracy law that would establish a so-called global license fee that - once paid - would permit Internet users to download unlimited digital music and films from the Internet for personal use.

“We are trying to bring the law up to date with reality,” said Patrick Bloche, a Socialist representing Paris, who was a co-author of the amendments. “It is wrong to describe the eight million French people who have downloaded music from the Internet as delinquents.”

Collected in a manner similar to the annual television license fee that many European countries require citizens to pay, the funds raised would be distributed among copyright holders whose goods had been downloaded…

[tags]french national assembly,online piracy,anti-piracy,french delinquents,patrick bloche[/tags]