Search results : 1132

On 2 June the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory authority ­ CSA) published the text of its response to the proposals made by the direction du développement des médias (directorate of media development ­ DDM) and the Centre national de la cinématographie (national cinematographic centre ­ CNC) on changes in the definition of what constitutes an audiovisual work. The case of "Popstars" had pointed to the need for a reform, and the DDM and the CNC had submitted four areas for consideration to the CSA last March (see IRIS 2004-5: 12). After carrying out a thorough analysis...

On 10 June the Constitutional Council published its decision on the provisions of the Act on Confidence in the Digital Economy (LCEN) which had been referred to it three weeks earlier (see IRIS 2004-6: 11). The first dispute concerned e-mail, defined in Article 1(IV) of the Act as "any message in the form of text, voice, sound or image sent via a public communication network and stored in a network server or in the addressee's hardware until it is recovered by the addressee". The Council held that this provision merely defined a technical process and could not affect the legal scheme covering private...

The Decree of 31 January 2002 lays down the practical must-carry conditions for terrestrially broadcast digital television on cable networks; this requires carriage of the terrestrially broadcast channels normally received in the area. Called on by the cable operators to cancel this Decree, the Conseil d'Etat rejected all the applications submitted. Thus the disputed Decree did not violate Article 34 of the Act of 30 September 1986 (that lays down the principle of the obligation to broadcast) by detailing the nature of the services covered by this obligation, as no rule or principle requires this...

The Regional Court in Paris has, for the first time to our knowledge, spoken out on the balancing of the right to making a private copy and the right to use technical means of protecting works. In the present case, a consumer, backed by a national consumer group (Union Fédérale des Consommateurs ­ UFC), complained that he had not been able to make a copy of the DVD of the film "Mulholland Drive" because the digital medium included technical protective devices which were not mentioned at all on the box. In support of their case, the applicants claimed that this constituted an infringement of the...

Article 1 of the Act on confidence in the digital economy, adopted by the Senate at its second reading on 8 April and examined by the Joint Committee on 27 April, creates a separate legal scheme applicable to Internet (see IRIS 2004-3: 8). The text lays down a number of definitions that establish Internet's place in French law relating to audiovisual communication. More particularly, the Act creates the notion of "communication to the public by electronic means", which refers to the making of signs, signals, documents, images, sounds or messages of any kind that do not have the characteristic features...