In France, remuneration for private copying was introduced by law 85-660 dated 3 July 1985 relating to rights associated with copyright, termed the “Lang law”; this covered private audio and audiovisual copying. Now enacted under the first chapter of Volume 3 of the Intellectual Property Code et seq., it was amended by the law of 17 June 2001 that now covers authors and publishers of graphic works.

 

This compensation, created originally for private audio and audiovisual copying, was initially levied on audio and video cassettes, then extended in 2000 to digital recording media such as CD-R, DVR-R and MP3 players a well as digital TV decoders incorporating hard discs for the recording of films. This remuneration is intended to compensate for the facility now available to consumers to copy music, audiovisual works or even books and images for strictly private and personal use.

  

The amount of this remuneration is laid down by law. Media to be subject to this levy and the amounts involved are both determined by an ad hoc administrative committee. Levy rates depend on the storage capacity, the compression ratio used by individuals when copying works and the amount of copying undertaken on this media as determined by the committee based on usage surveys carried out by a polling organisation amongst a representative sample of French consumers.  

 

In 1986, only analogue media was involved, such as audio and video cassettes; however, with the development of new technologies for the digital copying of works, the committee decided in 2000 to broaden the scope; it introduced new levies on CD-R (€0.33 for 650 Mb), DVD-R (€1.27 for 4.7 Gb), portable music players, “mini-discs”, memory cards for MP3 players (€1.05 for 100 Mb), hard discs incorporated in digital set-top boxes, home DVD recorders (€10 for 40 Gb). To partially offset the loss of revenue suffered by authors of the written word and of still images, authors and publishers who are the new beneficiaries of this remuneration are paid 1.25 euro cents per CD-R sold (650 Mb) and 1.5 euro cent per floppy disc sold (1.44 Mb).

 

The levies are paid by the manufacturers and importers of blank recordable media to rights holder authors, interpreters, producers, and recently to authors and publishers of books and images. The revenue arising from these levies is collected by SORECOP and by COPIE France who pass it on to the societies that represent the various music, film, book and image sectors.

 

The distribution of rights must be carried out by a collective management society that pays out the sums due in accordance with a legally-approved scale, in other words equally between the author and the publisher of the copied book. Note that, under the law relating to this remuneration, 25% of the money collected must be used to promote creativity, support greater access to live performances and artistic educational activities.

 

In 2007 remuneration for private reproduction amounted to €155 million across all sectors: music, audiovisual, the written word and still images. The latter two represent only a very small part of the total, about €3 million.  

This remuneration regime for private reproduction is now applied generally across Europe with the exception of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Luxembourg; it is for this reason that article 5.2(b) of the directive dated 22 May 2001 concerning copyright and associated rights in the Information Society, which aims to harmonise copyright across Europe, allows governments to retain an opt-out for private copying on condition that this applies to “reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject matter concerned”.

 

The exception for private copying, although universally recognised, either specifically as under French law or as a consequence of “fair use” as under US law, could have disappeared in a digital environment where anti-copying devices might have been introduced on all media containing works. However this concept, at one time being considered, now seems to have been generally abandoned. Additional remuneration for private copying, levied on recording media, is therefore still very much the norm, especially with the proliferation of digital media incorporating high-capacity memory such as the new generations of telephones, electronic organisers, computers and soon terminals using electronic paper, all of whish are technical devices that augment the private copying of works by an increasing number of consumers.

This remuneration is specifically governed by the following provisions of the Intellectual Property Code:

 

-  Remuneration for the private copying of works on any media other than record players or video-players is distributed between rights holders by societies for the collection and distribution of PLR in respect of the private reproduction to which each work has been subject (art. L.311-6);

 

-  It applies equally to authors and publishers (art. L.311-7);

 

- 25% of the money arising from remuneration for private reproduction must be used to promote creativity, support greater access to live performances and artistic educational activities(art. L. 321-9).

Under a protocol signed on 25 October 2005 between ADAGP, SACD, SAIF and SCAM concerning the management of the written word element of remuneration for private reproduction, SOFIA collects the corresponding sums from SORECOP and COPIE France. A working group with members from writers’ societies decides on the distribution of sums due to authors on the basis of usage surveys, with SOFIA doing the same for that part due to publishers.

Regular studies carried out by a specialised institute (in this case, Médiamétrie) involving a sample of more than 9000 people, determine the categories of works copied and, consequently, the number of beneficiaries as a function of the total number of rights holders reported by each society.

SORIMAGE is a holding company linking several collection societies in a single sector; this company was specially created in 2005 to collect and distribute remuneration in respect of the private copying of still images.   

This company consists of two colleges: Authors and Publishers, within which can be found the collection societies representing rights holders for still images.

SOFIA is involved with both colleges in respect of that portion of rights due to publishers and for its members within the category of authors of “graphic novels” and “children’s illustrators”.

Distribution of sums within SORIMAGE is also undertaken on the basis of surveys carried out by Médiamétrie that measure in this case the amount of private copying as a function of the images contained in the various categories of work.