'Legal download' label for websites

FRANCE'S new anti-piracy body, Hadopi, is to start issuing an official label to websites offering legal music and video sales, in a bid to educate web users about illegal downloading.

Download providers in France can now apply for the "legal download" label, which should be displayed prominently and must be accompanied by a list of the licensing deals that the site has in place with record labels.

The badge is granted for a year - and, paradoxically, some sites offering illegal downloads will be able to apply for it if part of their repertoire is licensed legally.

Hadopi has been sending out warning emails to suspected illegal downloaders since early October, but it also has a responsibility to educate web users and promote legal alternatives, which until now it has not done.

Alpes-Maritimes MP Muriel Marland-Militello has called for Hadopi to stop issuing the legal warnings until this education role has been fulfilled and the first labels have been awarded to legal websites.

Record industry body Snep (the Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique) says its members are detecting an average of 25,000 illegal downloaders a day and asking Hadopi to identify who they are.
Haute-Savoie MP Lionel Tardy said Nicolas Sarkozy admitted to party colleagues in a meeting yesterday that the law was not perfect and some changes needed to be made.
Tardy told the Nouvel Observateur: "He said that adopting the law was necessary, but that a number of things now needed to be looked at again.
"He seems to have changed his position and wants to move from a repressive stance to something else."