EMI boss attacks French moves to legalise file-sharing

The chairman of EMI Group PLC, the world’s No. 3 record company, today condemned French moves to legalise online music file-sharing as an “aberration,” and urged a rethink by the government.

“If France continues down this road it could jeopardise the promising growth we’re now seeing in the legitimate online market,” Eric Nicoli said.

The French government is expected to publish new proposed amendments to its copyright bill soon, after suffering a rebellion by many of its own lawmakers last month.

The deputies voted changes that would introduce a so-called “global licence” - allowing Internet subscribers who opt to pay an additional monthly fee to copy as much music as they like online. The additional revenues would be distributed among artists and other copyright owners.

Consumer groups welcomed the vote, but music labels, retailers and artists - including venerable French rocker Johnny Hallyday – have lined up to condemn it as an effective green light to piracy.

“France has always respected copyright and supported creative industries, so it seems an aberration that the government has taken a first step towards a global licence,” Nicoli said, in a keynote speech at Midem, a global music industry gathering in the French Riviera town of Cannes.

“I urge the French government to reconsider and reverse these proposals,” he said. “Protection of copyright is of utmost importance in any business relationship within the digital arena.”

A crackdown on piracy is bound to be politically delicate in France, a year before presidential and legislative elections.

Growth in revenues from legal music downloads outpaced the decline in CD sales for the first time in France last year, according to a new study. But it also found that French internet users downloaded about 1 billion music tracks in 2005 - double the previous year’s number. Of these, legitimate music purchases accounted for only 20 million, or 2%.

Faced with increasing pressure from some of France’s best-known celebrities, the government now shows signs of reining in its rebels.

Ministers plan to push a compromise that would drop the global licence, according to French press reports, but that would also weaken penalties for people who deliberately disable the copy-protection on CDs or other media.

Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy – who also leads the conservative ruling party Union for a Popular Movement – said last week that the global licence amendment was unacceptable.

“No other country has taken this approach,” Sarkozy said. “Artists and rights holders want to be compensated according to their talent and their work, not in a collectivist way.”