For the Internet age, the night of the 21 December 2005 is a new night of 4th August ( a more scholarly analysis ) abolishing the privileges of an economical feudality made obsolete by new information technologies (like the feudality of the Middle Ages was made obsolete by new military techniques)

Almost all French representatives have been upset by the governement tactics to expedite the examination of this law, under emergency status just before Christmas. It was clearly an undemocratic maneouver that backfired. It is an historical bipartisan advance going beyond political cleavages and is of worldwide significance.

It is really a very great advance because the fight to defend new tech habits has been almost forgotten at the WSIS. P2P is only mentioned in the Geneva Action Plan in only one paragraph which has been writen by Dr. Francis Muguet, and was miraculously adopted verbatim.

It is simply impossible for us to translate the massive amount of ressources of French. This page is not the translation of the page in French, but a list of few existing ressources in English. The big problem is that existing ressources in English are so digustingly biased that it is almost impossible to a non-french speaker to have a fair representation of the facts.

For a starter, ressources in English lack completely to report that it is a concerted coalition of users and artists : the "coordination public-artistes" with a new legal concept : the "global license". who won the day ( ie.. the night ). They failed to report that this proposal was made following a study by respected french academics... This is a good example of misinformation made not be telling lies, but by avoiding to tell some truths... ( retention of information )

You might try to explore the the page in French using the two automatic translation tools ( Google top of page, Altavista bottom ) that are available on the page.

• EUCD / DADVSI : lucas study on the global license available in english
• How File Sharing Reveals Your Identity

• See recent news
• Inquiry set for French file-sharing plan ( February 03, 2006 )
• Free legal downloads for $6 a month. DRM free. The artists get paid. We explain how… ( February 01, 2006 )
• Tuppence, happence, anna farthing's worth ( December 29, 2005 )
• Free P2P In France ? ( SlashDot discussions )
• Will France legalize file sharing? ( 23 December 2005 )
• French lawmakers support file sharing (22 December 2005 )
• French parliament votes to legalise P2P online file sharing ( 22 December 2005 )
• French Digital Restrictions ( 6th December 2005 ) one of the few really informed article.
• Music Like Water – the inevitable music ecosystem ( January 08, 2005 )
• An overview of the protection of technological measures in France ( January 30, 2004 )

• Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society
• MusicFuturist
• P2PwebLog