PARIS -- The International Federation of Film Producers Associations has finalized its new international film festival regulations -- the first overhaul of rules governing such major events as Venice, Cannes and Berlin in more than three decades. The new regulations come into force Jan. 1.

The key changes, outlined in a summary given to The Hollywood Reporter, include scrapping the ban on films competing in more than one international festival, a revision of FIAPF's festival classification to better reflect the status of each event and a more specific and tougher stance on piracy.

The overhaul also comprises the formation of a standing committee to monitor FIAPF festival regulations. Made up of FIAPF members and festival and industry representatives, its inaugural meeting is scheduled for February in Berlin. FIAPF membership includes the MPAA and the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television, the U.K. trade body for independent producers.

One of the committee's first tasks will be to draft a voluntary code of conduct to avoid spats over hot titles, which may be "stolen" from one fest at the last minute by a supposedly more prestigious event, the federation said.

The aim is to prevent controversy like the one that surrounded Walter Salles' "The Motorcycle Diaries" this year. The account of Che Guevara's trip around Latin America was scheduled to run in competition in Berlin before Salles switched to Cannes at the eleventh hour. The move prompted Berlin to publicly accuse Cannes of stealing its premiere -- much to the annoyance of organizers of the French event. Last year's Venice Golden Lion winner "The Return" was the subject of similar controversy when Venice snaffled the film away from Locarno. Under the new proposals, festivals would agree to "best practice" guidelines and third-party conflict resolution in future cases of this kind.

"The idea is to codify what kind of behavior should be acceptable," FIAPF director general Bertrand Moullier said in an interview. "It is complicated because competition between festivals is only going to increase -- not decrease -- but it's worth a try."

The new rules have so far been sent to festivals that take place in the first six months of next year to give them time to prepare. This includes Berlin and Cannes. Later events will receive the new regulations in the coming months. "I suspect there may be some tweaking between now and the end of the calendar year," Moullier said.

Having existed for 71 years, FIAPF is older than nearly all the festivals it accredits under its voluntary system. But the body has come in for criticism in the past for doing little to help festivals' needs besides act as a judge of whether events meet its own criteria. "I'd like to see them do something more for us," a senior figure at one of Europe's leading film festivals said.

The overhaul was initiated under FIAPF president Andres Vicente Gomez, the head of Spain's Lola Films and a leading European producer, who took up the federation's top job last year.

With Berlin chief Dieter Kosslick on vacation and not yet having seen the finalized version, Germany's top festival declined comment on what the changes would mean. But an insider said the new regulations are unlikely to make much difference to the top competitive festivals.

"Berlin will continue to compete with the other big festivals to get world premieres," a source close to the German event said. "(These regulations) will probably mean more for the smaller festivals than for the big ones."

The Festival de Cannes also did not anticipate any significant change to its operation but cautiously welcomed FIAPF's efforts to become more relevant to the current festival world. "At least (the FIAPF is) trying to shake things up," Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux said.

Under current festival rules, a key editorial criterion is that films have not been shown elsewhere in an international competition. Competitive sections considered national, like Sundance, do not exclude a film under FIAPF rules. In order to comply, festivals sometimes lower the bar to get fresh films, Moullier said.

FIAPF sees the possibility of films competing at multiple festivals as a plus in terms of movie promotion because a film could be helped by having the chance of winning more than one award. "It would also help a small film that screened in a small festival but then couldn't get picked by a major festival (under the existing rules)," FIAPF director of festivals Susannah Davies said.

The FIAPF rule change does not mean that festivals would have to amend their own rules, which may preclude films that have competed elsewhere. "It means producers will have to check with each festival what their own rules are," Davies said.

The Slovenian movie "Beneath Her Window" was bumped from the recent Karlovy Vary festival in the Czech Republic when it was pointed out that the film had screened in the Lubljana international festival -- despite the fact that the latter is not a FIAPF-accredited event. In the future, the Czech festival would have the choice to let such a movie remain in its competition lineup and still retain its FIAPF accreditation.

Moullier said the change to festival classification is simply acknowledging the disparity between the festival aristocracy, represented by Cannes, Berlin and Venice, which some might consider are devalued by sitting in the same category as such events as Cairo and Mar del Plata.

Other festivals accredited on FIAPF's so-called A-list include Locarno, San Sebastian, Tokyo, Moscow and Shanghai.

Moullier pointed out that the A-list category is in fact a misnomer because the list is purely descriptive of these events' competitive status and makes no qualitative distinction between them. "We're not scrapping anything -- what we're doing is the reverse," he said. "We never did have a classification which distinguished between festivals of high impact."

FIAPF now plans to collect data on accredited festivals, including how many world and international premieres they have, plus other factors such as the number of industry professionals and journalists attending, the number of screenings and so on. This will be used to produce an annual publication with the new festival classifications, the first of which is likely to appear in the first half of 2006.

The top category will doubtless include the heavyweight international world premiere competitive festivals but also could include top-flight noncompetitive fests.

"We have to acknowledge that things have changed. You cannot write off Toronto and London as minor events," Moullier said. "We believe it will be more useful and won't actually damage the standing of more modest festivals." FIAPF hasn't yet defined precise criteria of any subsequent categories.

On piracy, Moullier said there is little hard evidence that festivals are especially leaky. "But it's to festivals' advantage to be exemplary," he said. "The new regulations basically give us the right to go in and audit their security arrangements."

With past talk of festivals sidestepping FIAPF altogether to set up their own regulatory body, the producers' federation is making a clear effort to be more useful to the industry.

The Paris-based body is even hopeful that it may attract new festivals, with preliminary discussions going on with international events in Rotterdam and Marrakesh, as well as win back the Montreal festival that quit last year amidst a war of words over date changes.

And Moullier said that FIAPF may even persuade one of its most resilient potential members to join its ranks: Sundance. "The difference between now and two years ago is that (now) we're talking," he said.

Scott Roxborough in Cologne, Germany, contributed to this report.