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Deutsch: Frei wie in freie Kultur

Free Culture Forum (FCF), organized by the Spanish NGO Exgae together with Networked Politics and the Free Knowledge Institute turned Barcelona in the capital of free culture for 3 days.

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At the end of December 2008 it was publicly presented the first yearly report of the French Authority for Regulations of the DRMs (Autorité de régulation des mesures techniques - ARMT) that should have ensured the interoperability of the DRM systems and allow the private copies.

This could be very well the last report, since the new law on Internet and Creation, could create a new authority (HADOPI - Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet) that will take the place of the old one and will have a different scope: to issue warnings and potentially cutting Internet subscriptions in cases of copyright infringement.

ARMT rep

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On 3 January 2008, the European Commission (EC) launched a public consultation for the preparation of a recommendation on Creative Content Online to be adopted by the European Parliament and Council that calls for a common legal environment for online content, proposing multi-territory licences.

In the opinion of the European Commission, EU policies should support the rapid implementation of "new services and related business models for the creation and circulation of European content and knowledge online."

As a result of the public consultation on "Content Online in the Single Market" launched by the EC in July 2006, there were several calls for the encouragement of the cooperation between industry, right holders and

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Like everywhere else, DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) systems which impose technical restrictions on what end users can do with texts and multimedia content are highly unpopular also in Switzerland.

At the same time, the representatives of the entertainment industry claim that this technology is necessary, and politicians are inclined to believe their view that there should be a law against circumvention of DRM system. The main difference from most other countries is that Swiss citizens are able to force a national vote about the change of the law by collecting 50 000 signatures.

Of course the politicians know this and take it into account already when discussing legal proposals in the commissions of the Parliament. As

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The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) asks the music industry to get rid of DRM which they consider responsible for the continuously decreasing of online music sales in UK.

The industry music seems to ignore the consumers' preferences who are displeased with the copy protection systems imposing limitations on the content use. Additionally, the occurrence of various incompatible DRM formats has led to confusion and reserve with the consumers who tend to prefer file-sharing, lest they should find themselves in the position of not being able to play the music on their electronic equipment.

According to Kim Bayley, ERA director, the DRM is "working against the consumer interest" and "puts consumers off". In a statement to Financial

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A new survey regarding music online conducted by Entertainment Media Research in association with the law firm Olswang showed that the DRM (Digital Rights Management) related problems are more present in UK consumers' opinion than the music industry initially thought.

The survey was made on more than 1,700 respondents, a sample drawn from Entertainment Media Research's UK panel of 300,000 music consumers. The survey was performed in June 2007.

It shows that the number of people that have never heard about DRM dropped from 50% to 37% in just one year. Moreover, the number of respondents that claimed to have a good or exact knowledge of DRM almost tripled in the past year.

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The UFC- Que Choisir association has revealed the results of an online study performed in February 2007 regarding the use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems imposing third-party restrictions on the users of a reading device.

The poll has shown that most French Internet users have not been properly informed on the restrictions that DRM systems involve and that they definitely would like these technical protections out.

The poll covered about 800 Internet users that had already bought music online. Out of these, 51% stated they had never been informed on the usage restrictions that DRM imposes and 65% of them thought they could listen to the music they had legally bought on any device without any constraints.

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The independent authority foreseen by the new French law on copyright (DADVSI) was created in the last days of the Villepin government. This Authority for Regulations of the DRMs (Autorité de régulation des mesures techniques - ARMT) should ensure the interoperability of the DRM systems and allow the private copies.

Even though the law has been in force since August 2006, the official normative act creating the authority was published in the Official Journal only on 4 April 2007 and, a few days later, the Ministry of Culture has officially created the new authority. ARMT will be responsible, according to the DADVSI law, with seeing that the DRM systems do not create additional