The music industry really must try and ensure that key votes in the French parliament that affect the protection of its copyrights don't take place just before big holidays when most MPs are already sunning it up on the Riviera. Just before Christmas 2005 a low turn out in the French legislature led to the passing of a proposal that P2P file sharing of unlicensed content be made legal. The country's government never let that actually become law, but for a time it gave a boost to the pro-P2P lobby.
This time the pre-Easter low turnout did the opposite - leading to the blocking of new laws that the music business want to see passed, the much previously reported 'Creation & Internet' law that contains the infamous three-strike system that will see persistent illegal file-sharers in France lose their internet connections.
While the French parliament's upper house, the Senate, had already passed the new laws, and the Assembly had previously approved its most controversial provision - the aforementioned three-strikes - when the Assembly was asked to vote on the new act as a whole on Thursday those MPs who had bothered to show up voted 21 to 15 against.
As previously reported, there is still much vocal opposition to the new laws, and especially the three-strike system, and some reckon that those political types who oppose the proposals made an extra effort to attend on Thursday, aware that the government's supporters would be few and far between ahead of the holiday, giving them a chance to hinder the new stricter copyright rules.
It is more of a hindrance than anything else, because the French government have already said they will reintroduce their proposals to parliament almost straight away, and that they remain committed to making the three-strike system law. Nevertheless, music business groups in France have been critical of the government for letting their supporters in parliament drift away ahead of such a crucial vote on an issue where opposition within the Assembly was widely known.
It is not clear what the new timetable for pushing this legislation through will now be, though I think it will have to go back to the Senate as well as the Assembly, so it will mean a delay of at least months in making the new anti-piracy measures law. Given that the music industry hopes to use the momentum of France's new copyright laws, and the three-strike system, to persuade governments elsewhere to introduce similar measures, the delay is extra frustrating.
Recalling the sneaky pre-holiday vote on P2P in 2005, French songwriters society Sacem said on Friday: "Unfortunately, lessons from the past have been useless, which is a great frustration for creators who are each day more penalised and despoiled". They and other industry bodies called on the government to get the 'Creation & Internet' proposals back on the parliamentary agenda asap.