Good Ideas From France (of all places):

Seems like a week of reversals. New York is having transit strikes and the French Parliament is doing something right for once. Chirac's government and the recording industry oppose it of course. It was passed in a late night and lightly attended session, and the upper house still has to approve it, but it seems that the lower house of France's parliament has struck a blow in favor of sensible copyright policy. Last night they voted in favor of a bill explicitly defending file sharing downloads as "private use".

The recording and film industries have been claiming for quite some time that music and films "stolen" through file sharing are largely responsible for their flagging sales and profits in recent years. I can think of a few other reasons. Across the pond in our fair (but not "fair use" apparently) land of liberty (but not if an industry lobby decides it needs a scapegoat for its own incompetence and inability to adapt to new circumstances and technologies), the tentative French step forward is countered by at least two steps backward.

My take on copy protection in the digital age is that so long as I am not a) using someone else's content for profit, b) attempting to claim authorship of someone else's work, or c) depriving someone else of their property (ie. stealing a DVD) the government has no business telling me what media I can consume, how I can consume it, or where I get it from. Of course intellectual property is an extremely complex and important area in today's world, and some legal framework is certainly required. Patents are the foundation of an economy that depends increasingly on non tangible assets. However, defaulting to ever increasing IP rights and "harmonizing upwards" is a dangerous game. As a liberal (original flavor), I feel the burden of proof lies with a government if it wants to restrict its citizens' liberty in any way.

What do you all think?