Brussels, 06/08/2004 (Agence Europe) - The fight against piracy in cultural industries is one of the favourite themes of the French Minister for Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, who brought the matter up at the informal summit in Rotterdam on 13 July this year. On this occasion, the minister had proposed an "exchange of good practice" between Member States, coordination of information and awareness campaigns and revision of instruments to combat piracy in order with a view to eradicating this scourge.
At the national level, there has been a step in the right direction. Internet access providers and professionals of the French music industry thus signed, on 28 July, in the presence of Ministers Nicolas Sarkozy (Economy, Finance and Industry) and Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and of Deputy Minister for Industry Patrick Devedjian, a "Commitment Charter for the development of the legal provision of music on-line, respect of intellectual property and the fight against digital piracy". The Charter forms a "point of departure for joint commitments for developing legal provision of on-line music and educating consumers to orient toward legal offers", which will allow authors, producers and interpreters to be guaranteed fair remuneration and therefore the survival of the market, Mr Donnedieu de Vabres stressed. Failing this, artistic and literary creation and its diversity will be threatened. Among the measures envisaged by the Charter there are pedagogical actions in colleges in order to make young people aware of the problem, the development and the promotion of on-line music with, above all, a rise in the number of titles available in the current catalogue from 300,000 to 600,000 by end 2004, and the commitment of access providers to systematically send a warning message to those found to be using the internet for piracy, as well as the cancellation of subscriptions for persons having already been found guilty of piracy.
France hopes to encourage its European partners to envisage similar measures and confirms in a press release its commitment to call on the EU to lower VAT on music recordings.