French Pop Music Tracks
New French law on Internet piracy
A thousand French Internet users a day could be taken off-line following approval of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pet project — an unprecedented law to cut the Internet connections of people who repeatedly pirate music and movies.
As the husband of supermodel-turned-pop star Carla Bruni and friend to some of France’s most powerful media figures, Sarkozy has long basked in his cozy ties with the entertainment industry, which has embraced the measure.
But many in Europe have denounced it, saying government controls needed to enforce the law could open the way for invasive state monitoring that violate privacy. And legal challenges at home could derail it: The opposition is trying to get the law declared unconstitutional.
Predictably, music, film and other industry groups have welcomed the measure. John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said Wednesday that it represents a “sea change.”
Critics, however, worry about civil liberties.
“We should be careful about interfering with the freedom of exchange of information,” said Wolfgang Zankl, professor at the University of Vienna and president of the European Center for E-Commerce. “This is a constitutional right which no one should be barred from.”
Some Internet experts say the law will be technically impossible to apply. It requires Internet subscribers to install special software that would enable authorities to track down and identify those suspected of illegal downloads, but some experts say such programs do not yet exist.
And because it denies accused pirates the chance to defend themselves before their Web connections are severed, legal experts say it will not stand up in court.
The measure’s first short-term test came Tuesday, when the opposition Socialists took their objections before the Constitutional Council, which has a month to issue a ruling. If the council decides the law does not violate the constitution, it could take effect by summer.
It calls for graduated reprisals against alleged offenders. If a suspected pirate fails to heed e-mail warnings and a certified letter, Internet access would be cut for two months to a year — with the subscriber required to keep paying for the service under the contract’s terms.
Christine Albanel, the French culture minister, foresees cutting 1,000 Internet connections a day and sending 13,000 warnings to first- or second-time offenders.
In the United States, the music industry has waged war on content swappers with limited success. A campaign to sue individuals who repeatedly download free songs was dropped last year in favor of an effort to work more closely with Internet service providers to try to block connections of alleged offenders. AT&T, the largest Internet service provider in the U.S., is beginning to send the warnings to its subscribers.
Even before the French legislation was approved this month, it encountered resistance in the European Parliament. Elections for a new parliament take place in June, and the fight for Internet freedom has become a campaign issue in some countries, notably Sweden, which has gained a reputation as a hub for illegal file-sharing.
Support for Sweden’s Pirate Party, which calls for legalization of file-sharing, is growing, and a recent poll shows the party could gain a seat in the European Parliament.
Christian Engstrom, the party’s nominee, said the French law is damaging to the free exchange of information on the Internet. French cooperation with the “greedy copyright industry is not fitting for a Western democracy,” he said.
With the exception of Sweden, where a court sentenced four men last month to one-year jail terms for helping people download copyrighted material, court cases in Europe have failed to dent the practice. A Spanish court this week will hear the latest industry case against suspected file-sharers.
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French Pop Music
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The Last Waltz (Special Edition) $6.44 Martin Scorsese’s 1978 capsule history of the Band is mixed with footage of the group’s allegedly last performance (certainly their last performance as a quintet) in this particularly stylish concert film. Scorsese shoots the players and their sundry guests with the same flair and enthusiasm one can see in the later The Color of Money or Goodfellas. He also proves a good interviewer with Band memb… |
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We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things $7.23 Since 2002′s jaunty Waiting for My Rocket to Come, Jason Mraz has developed into a more mature, well-rounded pop artist. We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things is his most multi-dimensional work yet, covering everything from groove-based material to ballads. While tracks such as “Make It Mine” and “Butterfly” refer back to the catchy style of previous albums, there are many other styles and textures o… |
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Led Zeppelin $14.37 Exclamations of religious awe are in order. Legendary and long sought-after, this live Led Zeppelin collection is nothing less than the rock music equivalent of the Holy Grail. Quite simply, this is what all the fuss was about. Given that they were the biggest band in the world, Zeppelin were notoriously camera-shy in their heyday. Their official filmic legacy until now has been just the fasc… |
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Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains the Same [Blu-ray] $9.99 For Led Zeppelin fanatics, this 1976 feature The Song Remains the Same is a treasure of searing live performances, particularly welcome in light of the sad scarcity of such visual material from the band’s great decade. Despite the group’s road weariness after a long tour, their final, three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in 1973 was full of the old power. Performances of “No Quarter,” “… |
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Ekho $0 12+~~mutationevent~~mutationevent~~http://itunes.apple.com/app/ekho/id467827314?uo=5~~mutationevent.com~~1.1~~4470857~~2422169~~http://ekho.mutationevent.com~~http://www.mutationevent.com |
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Music Hits Jukebox – Greatest Songs of All Time, Top 100 Lists and the Latest Charts $0 12+~~Merlea Razvan~~Merlea Razvan~~http://itunes.apple.com/app/music-hits-jukebox-greatest/id409752071?uo=5~~Merlea Razvan~~1.9~~5432395~~6558099~~http://www.vanillahousestudios.com/jukebox~~http://www.vanillahousestudios.com |