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The never-ending story of the Bill on the Information Society (see IRIS 1999-8: 4) seems to have moved into a decisive stage this month. After a final round of inter-ministerial arbitration, Christian Pierret, the Secretary of State for Industry, signed an almost definitive version of the text which should be presented in a meeting of the Cabinet in June, after obtaining consultative opinions from the administrative authorities (CSA, CNIL, ART, etc). The purpose of the Bill is more particularly to transpose into French law the Directive of 8 June 2000 on e-commerce; the stated aim of the Bill is...

The Act of 13 March 2000 (see IRIS 2000-3: 12) has now amended the general provisions of the French Civil Code on literal proof by laying down the principle according to which "a document written on an electronic support has the same evidentiary value as a document written on a paper support". Article 1316-4 of the Civil Code contains new provisions on electronic signatures. According to paragraph 2, where a signature is "electronic, it consists of using a reliable identification process guaranteeing its link with the document to which it is attached. The reliability of the process is presumed,...

The concept of the now famous television programme "Big Brother", which first appeared in the Netherlands in September 1999 and has since spawned other programmes in both the United States and Europe, has been taken up in France by the terrestrially-broadcast Hertzian channel M6, which has just launched the programme "Loft Story". This first broadcast by Real TV in France proposes to following in real time the lives of 11 single people (6 young men and 5 young women) who have agree to being filmed twenty-four hours a day for seventy days, corresponding to a period of flat-sharing in a loft. The...

The distribution of many phonograms is often promoted by means of a video clip that adapts the soundtrack of the original phonogram to visual images. These video clips are entirely dependent on the exploitation of the original sound work, and a recent decision by the court of cassation has now set out in detail the conditions for producing video clips. In the case in question, the performing musicians and their representatives claimed that video clips could not be produced without their authorisation as this constituted a secondary use of their performances. On the other hand, the producers of...

As the number of French homes wanting to obtain Internet access is increasing constantly, access providers regularly make ever more competitive connection offers to meet the large-scale demand. Thus, during the summer of 2000, the company AOL advertised an offer, valid for several months, of unlimited Internet access for FRF 99.00 per month, inclusive of access and phone time. The offer was very successful, rapidly generating not only a large number of new subscriptions but also, as a result, connection problems that were widely reported in the press and acknowledged openly by the access provider....