Interior view of the French National Assembly in Paris. PARIS -- France may be about to introduce the most draconian anti-piracy laws yet.
Internet downloaders could face jail sentences and software makers may be required to add anti-copying technology to products distributed in France under draft legislation that's expected to go to a vote this week.
A last minute fight over the bill broke out late Wednesday, when an amendment was introduced that would legalize peer-to-peer downloads instead of criminalizing them. The amendment is not final, however, and the bill's original intent is expected to be restored.
The so-called emergency legislation would require software makers to include digital-rights management, or DRM, software in their products, according to a draft (.pdf) of the proposed legislation seen by Wired News. Software makers could be liable if their software is used for illicit purposes -- whether the software was designed for peer-to-peer networks or office intranets.
French legislators are also calling for three-year jail sentences and fines of 300,000 euros for illegally copying music, video or any other copyright-protected files.
Laws could also be set in place mandating that ISPs shut down accounts of suspected pirates.
But forcing all software makers to conform to special DRM rules for France alone is likely unworkable, said Urs Gasser, professor of law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
"The software companies and consumer-electronic companies are certainly not willing to finance creating special software that involves these special protection keys," he said. "I simply cannot imagine that something like that could happen for just one European country that is not even being discussed on a European level."
The lower house of France's national assembly is scheduled to vote as early as Thursday on the legislation, which has been proposed as a way to bring France into compliance with a pending European Commission copyright directive. (Contrary to news reports earlier this month, France is not expected to try to make open-source software illegal.)
The proposal goes well beyond the EC directive, which seeks only to criminalize "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting" acts of copyright infringement. A similar rule was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent Grokster decision.
The language of the proposal reflects lobbying pressure from French media giant Vivendi Universal and other recording industry interests, said Loic Dachary, founder of the eucd.info watch group and treasurer of The Free Software Foundation in France.
"Vivendi Universal, the Business Software Alliance and the Société des Auteurs et des Compositeurs de Musique actually drafted these texts that the legislators are using," Dachary said.
The industry considers the imposition of strong, proactive measures on software makers necessary to thwart pirates, especially in Europe where more than one in three copies of software in use is unlicensed, said Gaëlle Prigent-Protasov, a vice president of software maker Aladdin.
"Piracy rates will be reduced by creating stronger legal protection for software, increasing the effectiveness of enforcement, targeting resources more effectively ... (and) educating and improving public awareness (while) partnering with industry," Prigent-Protasov wrote in an e-mail message.
