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In the course of the public examination of Article 20 of the draft Budget for 2004 covering the audiovisual licence fee, the Senate adopted the budget for communication during the night of 28-29 November. At the request of the Minister for Culture and Communications, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the Senators carried out a new distribution of audiovisual credits taking into account the additional revenue expected from licence fees. Following the rejection by the Members of Parliament on the National Assembly's Finance Committee of the original proposal to combat evasion of payment of the fee by cross-checking...

On 13 October, the Court of Appeal in Versailles delivered a decision on application of Article 22724 of the Criminal Code. Under this article, the fact of either making, carrying or broadcasting by any means and on any support a message of a violent or pornographic nature or such as to seriously infringe human dignity, or commercialising such a message, is punishable by a three year prison sentence and a fine of 75 000 euros if the message is likely to be seen or noticed by a minor. In this instance, a case was brought against a teacher of French for having shown to a class in the fourth year...

In view of the increasing quantity of music and films downloaded and pirated using the Internet, the majors are increasingly including anti-copy systems in the CDs they put on sale. Four court cases have been brought in France against this practice. Consumer associations consider that these protected CDs totally prevent copying, which contradicts the French exception to private copyright included in Article L.122-5 of the Intellectual Property Code. Two decisions have already been delivered in these cases by the regional court of Nanterre. In both cases the problem was the same. The applicants...

On 22 October the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory body ­ CSA) published a recommendation for editors and distributors of television services broadcasting "cinematographic works that may not be shown to anyone under the age of 18 and pornographic or extremely violent programmes that may only be shown to discerning adults, likely to be damaging to the physical, mental or moral development of people under the age of 18" ("Category V programmes"). This recommendation follows on from a deliberation adopted by the CSA on 25 March 2003 providing that "for the broadcasting in...

The members of the National Assembly's Finance Committee have rejected the scheme the Government had included in the draft budget for 2004 aimed at reducing evasion of payment of the licence fee. Adoption of the amendment would have enabled the tax authorities to obtain the names and addresses of pay television operators' clients with a view to improving payment of the television licence fee. The operators of cable, satellite and encrypted television would have been invited to pass on their entire client files to the tax authorities, making it possible to cut the number of people evading payment...