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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...

In a judgment on 10 January, the Regional Court in Paris upheld the attitude adopted by the Court of Appeal in Paris in a decision made on 22 April 2005 in the case of S. Perquin and the association Que Choisir v. Universal Pictures Vidéo France (see IRIS 2005-6: 13), prohibiting the use by the producer of the phonogram at issue of a technical protection device on the Phil Collins CD Testify that made it impossible to make a private copy on any medium. In the present case, a private individual, with the backing of a consumer defence association, complained that he was not able to play a CD with...

On 13 January Professor Alain Lancelot submitted to the Prime Minister a report on the problems of concentration in the media drawn up by the committee that had been set up a few months earlier for that purpose. The report notes that the media scene has not reached an alarming degree of concentration, but it does propose a certain number of changes. Horizontal concentration does not appear to be any more intense than may be observed in the main European States. Nevertheless, although pluralism does not seem overall to be in a worse position than it was ten years ago, the committee draws attention...

Under the terms of Article 15 of the Act of 30 September 1986 (amended), the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory authority in France - CSA) is responsible for ensuring that children and young people are not shown television programmes that could be damaging for their development. At its plenary assembly on 20 December 2005, the CSA adopted a recommendation on television broadcasting of certain types of extremely violent fighting contests. In addition to the principles of dignity of the human person and maintenance of public order mentioned in the 1986 Act, the CSA text also...