Interview of Jérémie Zimmerman, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net, released on 19 May 2013 on RFI about the recommendations of the Lescure Report.

Back in 2011, I noted that one of the most significant achievements of the Hargreaves report was its shockingly revolutionary suggestion that copyright policy should be based on the available evidence, not "lobbynomics". The fact that this even had to be said shows to what depths policy-making had sunk - something clearly demonstrated by the disgraceful Digital Economy Act, or the extension of copyright term for musical performances, both of which were passed despite the evidence, rather than because of it. [...]

One of the most comprehensive studies into media sharing and consumption habits in the United States and Germany reveals that file-sharers buy 30% more music than their non-sharing counterparts. [...]

“US P2P users have larger collections than non-P2P users (roughly 37% more). And predictably, most of the difference comes from higher levels of ‘downloading for free’ and ‘copying from friends/family’,” American Assembly’s Joe Karaganis writes.

The European Union's governmental machine is a complicated beast, with its intertwining of supra-national, national and party-political levels (if you're interested in understanding how it works, the digital rights organization EDRI has put together a useful introduction.) That makes it quite hard to tell what is going on behind the scenes with this new Opinion of the International Trade Committee on a Digital Freedom Strategy in EU Foreign Policy) [...]

ACTA’s failure in the European Parliament is a huge victory for democracy and online freedom, Jeremie Zimmermann told RT. [...] Zimmermann insists that copyrights should be adapted to society, but “not the other way around,” and this should be done through democratic processes. [...]

The YouTube generation has gained an ally in the worldwide "copyright wars". The Dutch government wants to change copyright law so new media users can continue to do "creative remixes" of protected content. The Hague will no longer wait for the European Commission to find a compromise.

While most of the major entertainment industry companies wage war against BitTorrent sites, the Songwriters Association of Canada prefers to embrace file-sharing. Speaking with TorrentFreak, vice president Jean-Robert Bisaillon says that the Internet has revived the music business. Sharing music is part of people’s nature and the songwriters want to legalize file-sharing, while compensating the artists whose works are shared.

"Some well-known services, like Google or Facebook, are ever-growing," Besson complained to his Parliament this month, "without contributing in any way to finance infrastructure or creation."

Mike Rugnetta just received a note from the collecting society ASCAP soliciting funds to fight Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the EFF. According to ASCAP, these organizations are mobilizing to undermine ASCAP members' copyrights because they want all music to be free. Which, if you know anything about the kind of nuanced reform work these organizations do, is a pretty gross exaggeration. [...]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/23/ascap-raising-money.html

There'll be a lot of good, necessary beard-stroking over the next few weeks to figure out exactly what the organizers of the Humble Indie Bundle -- a six-game pay-anything collection that's just managed to top a million dollars in sales in a week -- did right, because it's something that seems it could and should be repeated.