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One week before the examination of the bill to transpose into French law the Directive no. 2001/29/EC of 22 May 2001 on copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society was to resume, the Court of Cassation joined the forum by delivering a notable decision on the use of technical protective devices in relation to private copying. A case involving “Mulholland Drive” had been brought before the Court (see IRIS 2004-7: 9 and IRIS 2005-6: 13), in which an individual, backed by a consumer association, complained that he was unable to make a video copy of the DVD of the film he had bought...

In 1994, the newspaper Le quotidien de Paris published an article with the headline “The obscurity of error”, concerning the encyclical “The splendour of truth” ( Veritatis Splendor ) issued by Pope John Paul II. The article was written by Paul Giniewski, a journalist, sociologist and historian and contained a critical analysis of the particular doctrine developed by the Catholic Church and its possible links with the origins of the Holocaust. A criminal complaint was lodged against the applicant, the newspaper and its publishing director, alleging that they had published...

On the same day as parliamentary debate began on the draft legislation on copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society, all the professionals concerned (players in the film circuit, Internet access providers, Canal +, France Télévision) signed an agreement on cinema on demand on the Internet. Whatever form it takes (dematerialised rental ("streaming"), dematerialised sale, cinema on demand individually, package offers or subscription), this agreement gives cinema on demand a specific place in media chronology. The signatory parties undertake that films will not be available on a...

The television channels France 3 and Arte are currently making a six-part docu-fiction covering the criminal case of the murder in 1984 of "little Grégory" that took on an exceptional dimension and earned substantial media coverage at the time. One of the parties in the case (a witness) has submitted the matter to the Regional Court of Paris under the urgent procedure. On the basis of Articles 809 of the New Code of Civil Procedure (urgent matters) and 9 of the Civil Code (privacy), the party concerned called for a ban on showing the series or, in the alternative and in a more original fashion,...

On 2 December, the National Assembly adopted two amendments to the draft legislation on copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society (DADVSI) granting the benefit of making a private copy to copies made by downloading from networks on condition that the Internet users pay remuneration to the rightsholders. As Parliament prepares to consider the text again in early March, the courts are finding it hard to achieve any coherency on peer-to-peer activities. After a series of recent decisions, the courts were tending to "legalise" downloading activities on the basis of the exception...