AfterDawn: News

France will subsidize music purchases in effort to fight piracy

Ars is reporting today that France will begin subsidizing legal music purchases for teens and young adults in an effort to fight piracy.

Citizens aged 15-25 will be able to purchase "carte musique" prepaid cards for certain subscription-based music websites. The cards will give users €50 of music, but the price will be €25.



The French government is subsidizing the rest.

Government officials say the program will run for two years and the government expects to sell one million cards each year.

The program is intended to ward off piracy, and to get younger consumers into the "good habit" of purchasing their music.

European Commission officials also applauded the move, calling the program "well designed" to fight piracy.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Oct 2010 15:05

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• 16 comments

• Interestx

  Why bother?
  
  Just add a few pennies to the price of blank CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays and tell the music & film business to go f*ck themselves if that isn't enough.
  
  Considering the hypocrites like Sony not only have a music & movie 'arm' but also make, sell & profit from burners & blank media the whole thing is just more of this ridiculous nauseous stupidity.
  
  They will never stop sharing.
  Sharing is not theft.
  Copyright infringement is not a criminal act.
  
  They've been pushing this cr@p since the days of 'home taping is killing music' - which was probably more prevalent given the baby boomers doing it compared to today's reduced young population.
  It';s just the music & film industry scrabbling around looking for anything to boost the coffers, no matter how absurd, vicious & vindictive.
  
  The only shock here is how supine our courts have been so far in going along with this farce and imposing their ludicrously disproportionate fines.
  
  Luckily light is visible at the end of the tunnel (in the UK at least) following the debacle with ACS Law.
  Note the comments about how demanding several £100's/£1000's in losses/damages for a £0.79 track is a legal nonsense.
  
  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/...er-factory.ars/

  15.10.2010 15:11 #1

• Tristan_2

  I had a strange gut feelin The France Gov would get most of the dough.....I kinda smell conspiracy
  

  15.10.2010 19:02 #2

• KillerBug

  Great idea...Stalin would be proud.

  16.10.2010 02:03 #3

• davidike

  hmm..
  

  "The public domain is a dicgrace to the forces of evil"
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

  16.10.2010 04:47 #4

• davidike

  great move, while france is gripped in country wide strikes, because of raising the retirement age and huge cutbacks to all public services plus freezing all public sector wages, and many many other Austerity cutbacks, they feel its a good idea to give millions of tax monies to some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet!
  
  
  and for UK residents!
  
  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/10/466106.html
  
  
  
  

  "The public domain is a dicgrace to the forces of evil"
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

  16.10.2010 04:47 #5

• davidike

  im sure plundering their tax for free music is just want the french want!
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11557723
  

  "The public domain is a dicgrace to the forces of evil"
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

  16.10.2010 06:45 #6

• scorpNZ

  Ok so what happes when the subsidy stops & the cost goes back to 50...lol...get real piracy will never fade no matter how cheap,hell they'd most probably still pirate even if it's for free
  
  @interestx
  you must've been born when the net was everywhere to assume baby boomers were more prevailant at copying with tape..lmao..we didn't have the net at our disposal like there is today,what it's around 1998 it was affordable to a few even early 2000 it was expensive just for dial up as for broadband forget it too expensive for most,i'd hazard a guess it was the same eveywhere else,no one relised the net would explode to what it is today & now people know less about their neighbours than they do with someone halfway round the other side of the globe...lol...
  

  17.10.2010 12:31 #7

• dufas

  I wonder if France handles car theft the same way. One can purchase a voucher for 50 percent of the vehicles price, turn in the voucher and get your new car. Maybe they can use the same scheme to raise home ownership. How about banking, buy a voucher for 100 Francs, go to the bank and pick up 200 francs.. My God... this could fix all ills in the world. Keep turning in double your money vouchers and everyone in the world will be millionaires. No more poverty, no more hunger....wait...oh oh, if everyone was wealthy, no one would want to work or farm or build things or repair things or do anything, They would just want to get everything for nothing, someone else, if they could find them, would have to do all the work...

  17.10.2010 12:52 #8

• Interestx

  scorpNZ
  
  As someone who was around during the 1970s I remember everyone but everyone taped a ton of their pals LPs.
  
  I know the net makes a digital copy (of many things, but not all) easy to obtain but back then copying was rife.....and with birth-rates in Europe so low there were probably more of us doing it then.
  
  Just like a decade later everyone but everyone video-taped films & TV shows without a murmur
  (and that's a vast number at it too with all generations doing it including parents & grandparents).
  
  This whole 'piracy' bollo*ks is just a scam.

  17.10.2010 14:55 #9

• Interestx

  dufas
  
  Stop pretending sharing is theft.
  There is no physical 'good' involved.
  
  The car analogy does not work because no physical goods are involved.
  It's merely copying, not stealing.
  
  If I could just copy your car why would you give a f*ck?
  

  17.10.2010 14:57 #10

• dufas

  @ Interestx
  A service is not physical either, so I imagine that you can not pay for a service and feel ok. How about sneeking into a concert or a movie theater. Those are not physical either. Situational ethics are working overtime it seems......

  17.10.2010 15:46 #11

• Interestx

  Dufas
  
  Nothing to do with "situational ethics", merely commenting that your analogy is grossly inaccurate.
  
  But then, let's be honest, that's why the defenders of the current copyright lunacy (nevermind the idiotic plans to extend it beyond anything originally intended) use it, it's because they imagine it 'works' with the general public.
  
  If I can copy a 'service' nobody loses either, so that one's not flying too well either.
  
  You might be on stronger ground if you were to start talking about downloading applications.
  But even in that market most recognise the futility and counter-productive nature of trying to monitise every single instance where the product might be used, especially when it is in many cases only the once or twice.
  
  Id suggest the ones with the distorted weird 'ethics' are the proponents & defenders of the present absurd system and those who 'believe' its extension is equitable.
  
  
  

  17.10.2010 16:20 #12

• dufas

  Originally posted by Interestx: Dufas
  
  Nothing to do with "situational ethics", merely commenting that your analogy is grossly inaccurate.
  
  But then, let's be honest, that's why the defenders of the current copyright lunacy (nevermind the idiotic plans to extend it beyond anything originally intended) use it, it's because they imagine it 'works' with the general public.
  
  If I can copy a 'service' nobody loses either, so that one's not flying too well either.
  
  You might be on stronger ground if you were to start talking about downloading applications.
  But even in that market most recognise the futility and counter-productive nature of trying to monitise every single instance where the product might be used, especially when it is in many cases only the once or twice.
  
  Id suggest the ones with the distorted weird 'ethics' are the proponents & defenders of the present absurd system and those who 'believe' its extension is equitable.
  
  While I agree that the copyright situation has grown to be an exorcise in lunacy. Suing little girls for downloading/recording a jingle or taking an 87 year old to court when the person doesn't even own a computer id idiocy of a grand scale.
  
  Copyrights that used to be terminal, meaning that they only lasted for 21 or so years and then slipped into public domain unless they were renewed are now good for 99 years and renewable for a dollar. Under the old copyright rules, it cost the same as a new copyright to renew and one had to prove beyond any doubt that they had a right to the material before renewal was given.
  
  My argument was that if you steal a service like cable TV or a satellite feed, technically you are not taking anything physical but it is stealing none the less. Then, I suspect, that if you are the one being stolen from, a different view would be addressed. If someone steals your job, they haven't taken anything physical and all you lose is some income. That's one of the areas where situational ethics come into play. It depends on who is doing the stealing or who is getting stolen from.

  17.10.2010 16:58 #13

• dufas

  @ Interestx
  
  As I remember when video tape recorders were first coming out, the same companies that are screaming about copyright problems now were trying to stop the sale of video recorders...but they lost that fight.
  
  I must be much older than you. I remember in the fifties when audio tape recorders came out, the music studios were all up in arms that we could record their songs off the radio. They lost that on too...
  
  Then, just as today, the very same people that wanted copyright protection got into the business of supplying the very machines and materials that allow music and video to be copied. RCA comes to mind, while complaining about copied music, they were one of the first to come out with portable tape recorders. My daughter uses one even today. It's either the height of hypocrisy or a feeble attempt to cash in on pirating. [ This was after the courts stated that there were enough uses of the various recording equipment other than copying copyrighted material to deem them not un-lawful.. ]
  
  We are going to have to agree to disagree on what is stealing and what is not...

  17.10.2010 17:20 #14

• Mez

  It is just like the French to get it all wrong! Piracy is about freedom at least as much as it is about price. The price thing would be more like a boycott. If I lived in France I wouldn't take advantage. I don't use those 50 free tune cards either.

  22.10.2010 07:31 #15

• dagobaker

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Great idea...Stalin would be proud. stalin was the brutal leader of communist russia i believe
  the french just usually surrender

  22.10.2010 21:55 #16