As Culture Moves Online, France Tries to Follow It With a Tax PARIS - France's "cultural exception" - the policy that creative works like books, music and movies deserve protection beyond what is accorded ordinary goods - is in line for a digital update. A government adviser has suggested that manufacturers pay a 1 percent levy on the price of smartphones and tablet computers to help keep funding for such works alive, as more and more end up online and beyond the reach of existing taxes. The tax, "painless for the consumer," could also be used to ensure that artists are remunerated at a time when so much is downloaded free, said the report, which was presented Monday to President François Hollande and his culture minister, Aurélie Filippetti. "Considering the weight of cultural content in connected devices, it is legitimate that those who make and distribute the equipment contribute to the financing of its creation," according to the report, produced under the guidance of a former television executive and journalist, Pierre Lescure. "L'exception culturelle" is no trifling matter: Nicole Bricq, the French trade minister, warned in March that it was "a red line" that could not be crossed in talks with the United States on a proposed free-trade area. France and 13 other European Union member nations insisted in a letter this week that the audiovisual sector must be left out of those talks, setting up a possible confrontation with the British prime minister, David Cameron, who has said that everything should be on the table. In practice, the cultural exception means broadcasters must meet quotas for French music and television programming, for example, and prices for books are set by regulators. The effort stretches throughout the economy, requiring a system of taxes and subsidies for its upkeep, perhaps most visibly in the country's film industry, which gets hundreds of million euros each year in subsidies - raised from taxes on movie tickets, television stations and Internet service providers - to defend itself from the Hollywood juggernaut. But technology threatens to render such measures irrelevant, the report noted. The nature of Internet commerce means foreigners can have access to the French market without having to pay the levies that support French culture. And as more content is streamed online or stored in the cloud, a tax on recording media like blank compact discs and memory sticks will raise less money - and that is where the smartphone tax comes in. Gilles Vercken, an intellectual property lawyer, acknowledged that streaming and the cloud would bring down those levies, which he estimated currently raise about €200 million, or $260 million, a year to support French authors, composers, actors, musicians and the like. But he expressed skepticism that the smartphone tax would see the light of day. "I wonder what could be the legal grounds for such taxes," he said, noting that the connection between hardware manufacturers and end users might prove a difficult one to defend in court. I really don't see it. Monica Horten, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics who studies the politics of intellectual property rights, said that, in principle, such levies were possible under E.U. law, but that "the problem is in the implementation." The first issue would be drafting a law acceptable to the European Court of Justice, while another would be in actually getting device makers on board to pay the tax. "I think you can expect them to filibuster," she said. The report seeks to address a problem that is as old as the Internet, which has shifted the balance of power away from content creators in favor of newer actors like Google, Amazon and peer-to-peer downloading services, even as it gives creators previously unimagined opportunities to be seen or heard. In addressing such matters, France has sometimes chosen to fight battles that other governments have shied away from. For instance, Google agreed in February to set up a €60 million fund to help French newspaper and magazine publishers develop their digital business, though it managed to fend off demands that it pay for the right to link to their content. And the Lescure report comes less than two weeks after Arnaud Montebourg, the minister for industrial renewal, put the kibosh on a sale to Yahoo of a majority stake in Dailymotion, a French rival to YouTube, because the government had singled out the company as a national champion and did not want control falling into foreign hands. The Lescure report also suggests that France throw out a "three-strikes" anti-piracy law that Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Hollande's predecessor, had held up as one of his signature achievements and one that had been hailed by the global entertainment industry. Under the Hadopi Law, as it is known, illegal downloaders were to have their Internet access cut off if they failed to heed three warnings; violators were also to be subject to criminal sanctions and large fines. In practice, there has been little enforcement action, though proponents credit the law with helping to reduce Internet piracy. If Mr. Lescure's recommendations are followed, law enforcement will focus on the worst violators, and most people would face minimal fines. A proposed "Hadopi authority" would be eliminated, and responsibility for enforcement would revert to the national media regulator, the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel.