The French Parliament has rejected the bill, proposed by the Sarkozy's government, that would have lead to the cut of the internet connection for "individuals" (IP numbers? Internet provider's accounts? Not clear ...) "caught" using peer-to-peer software to download copyrighted files. The bill had been approved by the Senate in the morning and this seems to be just a temporary stall. The bill will go back to the Senate, which will change one comma, and then will be re-submitted to the Parliament on April 29th ...

The Sarkozy's government needs the support of actors, singers and other "artists" in the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament: "artists" being traditionally on the left, this would help the poor right-wing husband of a struggling leftist artist to win the elections.

For those very same reasons the Prime Minister of Spain, Luis Zapatero, reshuffled his own government last week, appointing Mrs. Ángeles González-Sinde to the post of Minister of Culture (yes, they have that in Spain, and in France, and Italy ...). Her previous job was being the President of the Spanish lobby for the movie industry (the official name is way more pompous), the founder of which was her ... father.

In Spain, as in France, Italy and all over Europe, local "artists" are very active on the anti-freedom of downloading campaign, attributing the bad economic performances of the European (respectively, Spanish, French, ...) movie industry to the use of P2P software and downloading. As everyone knows, before P2P appeared the European movie industries were thriving and their movies were dominanting the world market.