A coalition of 81 cultural and media organizations in France — spanning the music, film, publishing, and press industries — has called on the country’s National Assembly to schedule debate on a bill that would create a legal presumption that AI providers use copyrighted content.
The bill, known as the Darcos law after its author, Senator Laure Darcos, was adopted unanimously by the French Senate last month.
It has since been transmitted to the National Assembly, but has not yet been placed on the legislative agenda, a step the coalition says is now urgent.
In a (translated) joint statement originally published in French on Tuesday (May 5), the 81 organizations said they were speaking “with a single voice to salute the determined commitment of the Senate in favor of respect for intellectual property in the era of generative AI.”
The 81 organizations added: “We cannot continue to accept that an economic sector is built on the generalized plundering of another sector in defiance of the rule of law, when there is a virtuous alternative for the benefit of all.”
“We cannot continue to accept that an economic sector is built on the generalized plundering of another sector in defiance of the rule of law, when there is a virtuous alternative for the benefit of all.”
Joint statement from cross-organization group in France
Music industry signatories include SACEM (the French collecting society for songwriters, composers, and music publishers), SNEP (the French recorded music trade body), SCPP and SPPF (the major-label and independent-label collecting societies, respectively), plus ADAMI (the performers’ rights organization), CSDEM and CEMF (music publishing trade bodies), and La Guilde des Artistes de la Musique.
Signatories from outside the music sector include SACD (the screenwriters’ and playwrights’ society), SCAM (the multimedia authors’ society), the Alliance de la Presse, and organizations representing film producers, book publishers, press agencies, photographers, translators, and voice actors.
The Darcos bill would insert a new article into the French Intellectual Property Code establishing a rebuttable presumption that AI providers have used copyrighted works — unless they can prove otherwise.
Under the proposed Article L. 331-4-1, in any civil dispute, a work protected by copyright or a related right “is presumed to have been used by the provider of the artificial intelligence model or system, where an indication relating to the development or deployment of that system or to the result generated by it makes such use plausible.”
In practical terms, the law would reverse the burden of proof in copyright disputes involving AI in France: rather than requiring creators to demonstrate their work was used to train an AI model, AI providers would need to show it was not.
The bill was introduced by Senator Darcos on Friday (December 12, 2025), alongside co-sponsors including Senators Agnès Evren and Pierre Ouzoulias.
It followed the failure of a government-led concertation between AI companies and rights holders earlier in 2025.
The French Council of State (Conseil d’État) issued a favorable opinion on the bill’s legality in March, finding that it was compatible with both the French Constitution and EU law.
In their statement, the 81 organizations argued that the presumption “makes effective the obligations of the [EU] AI Regulation in terms of copyright compliance and transparency; it rebalances the power dynamic between our cultural sectors and AI companies; it therefore creates the conditions for a dialogue to establish a new value chain.”
The statement urged National Assembly lawmakers to act: “Help us enforce the rules of the game by supporting the scheduling of the Presumption bill on the agenda and by giving it your votes before the summer!”
A separate open letter addressed to French lawmakers, backed by the same coalition, has gathered 25,000 signatures from individual cultural professionals, according to the organizations.
That letter warned that “the intense lobbying of global AI platforms” was now being deployed in the National Assembly, and that “the adoption of this text hangs by a thread.”
The French initiative is part of a broader wave of legislative and regulatory action on AI and copyright across Europe.
On March 10, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on copyright and generative AI that recommended a similar presumption of use at the EU level for AI models that fail to meet transparency obligations.
Meanwhile, a coalition of European creative industry bodies — including CISAC, ICMP, IFPI, and IMPALA — has criticized the EU AI Act‘s Code of Practice on copyright as a “betrayal” of the law’s objectives.
In the UK, the government reversed course in March on earlier plans that would have made it easier for AI companies to train on copyrighted music without permission.
And in the United States, prominent music publishers including Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord, and ABKCO have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against AI companies over the alleged unauthorized use of songs to train generative AI models.Music Business Worldwide