Media Wonk

Round deux for DRM in France - September 15, 2007

Content owners and distributors may have thought they were off the hook in France last year after the French Constitutional Council struck down parts of the so-called "iPod Law" that would have required Apple and others to open their proprietary online music services to third-party devices. But mandatory interoperability is back on the political agenda in the Fifth Republic.

Earlier this month, the French government established a commission headed by Denis Olivennes, chairman of FNAC, a major retailer of books, CDs, DVDs and electronics, to make recommendations on ways to combat online piracy, but also to recommend new economic models for distributing music and movies online, including tackling such issues as DRM, interoperability, pricing and windows.

The commission is to report back by Halloween.

The appointment of the commission follows a "mission letter" sent last month by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to his new cultural minister Christine Albanel, instructing her that the ministry's highest priority is to be the "democratizing" of culture. In the section on music and video works, the letter essentially directs Albanel, along with the minister of economics, to come up with a plan for the legal distribution of music and movies online that prevents piracy but also promotes the "diffusion" of digital content, interoperability and "responsibility" among users of the Internet, according to a rough translation I cajoled from a French-speaking colleague.

The plan seems to be to have France's Authority for the Regulation of Technical Protection Measures, established by last year's copy-protection law, lead an effort to get the industries to "voluntarily" adopt whatever recommendations the commission comes up with.

But if that doesn't work, Sarkozy said in his letter, the government should prepare legislation to make it happen.

Legislation, of course, can change in the course of becoming law, as indeed happened with France's current copy-protection law. As eventually passed by the National Assembly and Senate, and subsequently modified by the Constitutional Council, the law, known by its French initials DADVSI, is far friendlier to DRM and the rights of intellectual property owners than what was originally proposed.

But no matter the exact form of any legislation or "voluntary" plan, it's clear that online distribution is going to be a heavily regulated business in France. And much of the regulation is going to concern the use of DRM.

Sarkozy also says he expects France of course to be the "leader in Europe" in matters of cultural diffusion.

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