France to legalize P2P file sharing
Well aren’t the french roosters cocky! Their parliament has voted in favor of allowing free sharing of music and video on the Internet. This is a most interesting and important result, as France is one of the major political powers in the European Union, and this decision is quite clearly against the what the EU has going for. This is perhaps the first major loss for the lobbyists of music and movie industry.
Viva la France!
The law would be a blow to media companies that increasingly use the courts worldwide to sue people for downloading or sharing music and movie files. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.’s Fox say free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year.“The deputies used this vote to show their independence from the government, but they don’t know what they are doing,” Nicolas Seydoux, chief executive of French cinema company Gaumont SA, said in an interview on France Inter radio. “We are not trying to ban anything, just to make sure the work of others isn’t stolen.”
Source: Bloomberg
