Private copying: the figures revealed in the open debate on new legislation

While the new law on private copying levy was discussed 24th of this month in the National Assembly, the numbers of uses of the French in the field have been published for the first time.

The right to private copying is perfectly legal to use to duplicate a work (music or video) in his home. Example: You buy a CD you encode to transfer to your smartphone. This right has existed since 1985 as the fee supposed to support the creation and compensate the rights holders.

So far no estimate of the number of copied songs and videos had been made public. But the site Electron Libre was able to obtain an internal report to the Commission for private copying established by the CSA. These figures correspond to 2010 and are not final, because that does not include the use of tablets, hard drives and optical media, blank media. 

0.18 euro an hour of music and video

Thus, it is 5 billion of shares and 540 million movies or series that were copied last year legally on hard drives and players of the French. These are impressive figures and 320 million hours of music and 670 million hours of video. These figures are very interesting because they reveal the price of hours of music or video as part of this use: 0.18 euro.

A figure that is sure to bring water to the mill industry (annoyed to have to raise prices of their products to support this charge) and assigns (holding that the rates charged on these products are too low). At the cloud (storage will be less among individuals) and the integration of Community law with the law, it seemed necessary to change the law. It remains to know where to focus its review.