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On 31 August the Minister for the Economy and Finance gave the go-ahead for the merger of the two satellite television platforms CanalSat and TPS. 65% of the new group, to be called “Canal + France” initially, will be held by the Canal + Group, 20% by the Lagardère Group, 9.9% by the TF1 Group, and 5.1% by M6. It will have almost ten million subscribers. The Minister based his go-ahead on the opinions of the audiovisual regulatory body ( Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) and the fair competition board ( Conseil de la Concurrence ); the latter felt that the merger responded to “a certain...

Can a number of major advertisers (SNCF, AOL France, 9 Telecom, La Française des Jeux, etc) advertising their own products or services on peer-to-peer sites on which downloading is being offered be considered accomplices in the infringement of copyright in respect of the works that are downloaded? That was the question at the heart of the legal proceedings brought before the higher regional court of Paris by the co-producers and the director of the hugely successful film “The Chorus” (8.5 million tickets at the box office in 2004, and 1400 downloads per day on the eDonkey site in September 2004)....

Act No. 2006-961 of 1 August 2006 on copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society (see IRIS 2006-7: 11) has now been gazetted, after alterations by the Constitutional Council on three points. These covered firstly provisions to take the circumvention of technical devices preventing copying in the context of “interoperability” out of the scope of criminal prosecution, as the Council found the notion too vague and it imposes conditions upon the scope of application of the criminal aspects of the Act (Articles 22 and 23 of the Act). In a similar vein, the Council amended the final...

The Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (French audiovisual regulatory authority - CSA) has written to the French Prime Minister asking him to refer to the Conseil d’Etat the matter of applicable law in respect of the Franco-German television channel and the authorities it comes under. Under the terms of the treaty creating the European culture channel, signed on 2 October 1990, which came into force on 11 July 1992, the CSA has no authority over the channel. It nevertheless regularly receives correspondence concerning the channel’s programming, and wished to have its status clarified. On the basis...

On 23 May the Conseil d’Etat delivered its opinion on the way analog broadcasting is to cease. The French audiovisual regulatory authority ( Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) had put the matter to the Conseil d’Etat as the highest administrative jurisdiction in the country to determine whether it could amend or revoke a current authorisation for terrestrial broadcasting in order to carry out the necessary reorganisation of frequencies for the introduction of terrestrially-broadcast digital television (TDT). The reply from the Conseil d’Etat is clear - only the legislator may authorise and...