France: Cultural flatrate? Could this be true?
Thorough information is still hard to find, but it seems that the French parliament has taken a step I have long hoped for. As Bjoern Schiessle and Markus Beckedahl of netzpolitik.org write in accordance with the Register, the assembly voted 30-28 in favour of setting up a collection model for the remuneration of artists and rightsholders, while sort-of-legalising the peer-to-peer sharing of music and movies.
This would mean a monthly fee on internet connections of two to five euros. Just as it has been the practice with offline music for a long time, there will be a collection society distributing this money to rightsholders and artists.
However, I do not know yet what exactly this amendment to the French copyright law brings. This started as an initiative by the rightsholding industry to ban filesharing and Free Software. Until my information is complete, I will not have much of an opinion on this.