Anti-piracy agreement and strategy
After years of delays, an anti-piracy agreement was finally signed last Friday, in the presence of the French President, by 41 professional bodies of the film, music and Internet service provider industries.
Planned measures include establishing an independent administrative organization authorised to reveal the name of an Internet address. Once alerted to the offender, Internet providers will send him/her a first email warning, then a second, before ordering the suspension or indeed the cancellation of their Internet subscription, with the possibility of applying sanctions to the Internet provider if they do not comply with the terms of agreement.
A "blacklist" of known pirates will also be compiled pending authorisation from the CNIL (National Data Protection and Privacy Commission).
Moreover, the Internet providers and hosting and file-sharing platforms have agreed to try filtering illegal content in the two years after the agreement becomes law (in the first half of 2008), trials that should be facilitated by the rapid development of marking technologies (see news).
For its part, the film industry will regulate distribution windows by aligning video on demand (VoD) with DVD releases – i.e., 26 weeks after a film's theatrical release instead of the current 33 – with a four-month threshold being likely but only one year after the transition to 26 weeks.
Film industry representatives who signed the agreement include the APC (Association of Film Producers); API (Association of Independent Producers); ARP (Civil Society of Authors-Directors-Producers); DIRE (United European Independent Distributors); FNCF (National Federation of French Cinemas); FNDF (National Federation of Film Distributors); the SPI (Union of Independent Producers); the SRF (Society of Film Directors); the UPF (Union of Film Producers); the SPFA (Union of Animated Film Producers) and the FICAM (Federation of Film, Audiovisual and Multimedia Industries).
Signatories also included television companies Canal +, France Télévisions and TF1, and the SACD (Society of Authors and Dramatic Composers), while France Télécom, Iliad, Neuf Cegetel, Numéricable and Télécom Italia were amongst the Internet service providers present.
(Translated from French)
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