Is France becoming the most tech savvy country of the west? Perhaps not but France’s lower house has agreed to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing. In a surprise decision, just 2 out of 58 votes decided the outcome.

The measure, introduced as two amendments to a government bill designed to toughen digital copyright protection, would deem that downloading copyrighted files is legal as long as it is for private use only and the downloader pays a general fee for royalty payments, the AFP report said.

The report said such a fee could, for instance, be added on to the monthly subscription charge for broadband Internet access at the cost of a few euros.

This is pretty progressive and would allow everyone to share files and just kick back a bunch of money that can be shared by the artists. In theory, one can surmise the more of an artist’s songs are downloaded, the more of the fund you receive.

This is pretty interesting and opens up all sorts of worm cans. For example does Microsoft get a cut of every illegal MS Office file flowing through he network. How about porn movies. Is the French government going to cut checks to porn studios?

I get the feeling we won’t get to see this play out as government has called for a second vote and will likely pressure the National Assembly to rethink their stance.

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