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.

Remuneration for private copying is governed by Chapter one of Volume 3 of the Intellectual Property Code at articles L.311-1 et seq., as amended by article 15 of the law dated 17 July 2001. From now on, the right to remuneration also applies to authors and publishers of works recorded on any other media apart from the record player or video-player. The law states that this reproduction must be carried out on digital recording media:

 

“This remuneration is also due to authors and publishers of works recorded on any other media, in respect of any reproduction undertaken on digital recording media, in accordance with paragraph 2 of article L.122-5 [private copying].”

 

SOFIA has sat on the Private Copying Committee since February 2002 and acts on behalf of rights holders in the writing field, and especially on behalf of book authors and publishers.

The Private Copying Committee that was formed by the law dated 3 July 1985 is governed by articles L.311-5 and R.311-1 et seq. of the Intellectual Property Code. It is chaired by a government appointee designated by the Minister for Culture, and consists of 24 members, half of whom make up a college of rights holders for audio, audiovisual and graphic works, with the other half consisting of colleges of consumers and industrials. Its aim is to determine the types of media, levels of remuneration and payment methods for rights arising from private copying.

 

Amongst the decision taken by the Committee, three set new levels of remuneration in respect of books and still images:  

 

- Decision n° 4 dated 10 June 2003 relating to CD-R and CDs,

- Decision n° 8 dated 9 July 2007 relating to DVD, memory cards, USB keys and standard external hard drives, 

- Decision n°9 dated 11 December 2007 relating to so-called multimedia external hard drives that have no audio or video interface to enable the direct recording of music or films.

 

The written word still represents a minor part of private copying as witnessed by the still very limited use of digital copying onto removable media such as USB keys, external hard discs, CD-R or DVD, in the knowledge that many studies into this area indicate a high rate of reading and downloading of protected texts onto personal computers, still the favourite tool for the storage of text in comparison with other memory media whose high capacity makes them more suitable for the storage of works that demand significant storage volume.