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PIRACY BILL RETURNS TO FRANCE

The 'three strikes' internet piracy law returned to French parliament last week.
If the bill goes through, computer users would receive two written warnings for downloading copyright material, before they are cut off from the internet.

The controversial bill was voted out of the French Assembly on 9 April. But last week Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture and Communication for the ruling UMP party, reintroduced the bill. She said the new law was necessary to deal with the 1 billion files that are illegally downloaded in France every year.

Protesters marched through Paris on 1 May calling for the proposed legislation to be scrapped. "You are guilty before you are proven otherwise," said one demonstrator. "Someone could have hacked into your wifi connection and you are guilty, and all your family are guilty."

LAWRENCE LESSIG

Do we need to revise our copyright laws for the digital age? Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig thinks so. He's one of the founding members of Creative Commons, a new type of license for creative work.

Any material under this agreement - be it videos, articles or photos - is released free of copyright charges and restrictions. Hundreds of music albums and books have now been released under Creative Commons licences and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has recently made a TV programme available on the same basis. Lawrence Lessig tells Gareth why this shift is necessary to preserve our cultural heritage.

INSIDE IBM'S FUTURE LABS

Gareth visits the largest software development lab in Europe - IBM's Hursley campus. In contrast to the sprawling towers of Silicon Valley, this R&D centre is based in a massive historical country house in the heart of England, near Winchester. He sees the future of shopping with a demo inside their retail lab, and takes a trip on a bus that Tweets.