Internet Pirates In France To Lose Broadband 388
slyjackhammer writes "France is purporting to take a hard line on copyrighted media (movies and music). According to timesonline.co.uk, a new measure approved yesterday by the French Cabinet would kill the Internet connection to those caught downloading illegally. 'There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone," President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the "three-strikes-and-you're-out" scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts. Under a cross-industry agreement, internet service providers (ISPs) must cut off access for up to a year for third-time offenders.' Google and video site Dailymotion have refused to sign up as consenting participants, and the state data protection agency, consumer and civil liberties groups and the European Parliament are all kicking against the goad as well. France may be pioneer in this kind of legislation, but they sure have their work cut out for them."
Democracy (Score:5, Informative)
At least they're debating it in parliament. In the UK Virgin Media's behind-closed-doors deal [slashdot.org] with the media industry has already been covered here.
Note to self - I need to switch away from an ISP that is itself a content provider with vested interests in censoring my internet connection. Soon.
Re:Yeah, okay (Score:5, Informative)
Repeat after me: ISPs are not common carriers. They have already bought other laws so the don't have to.
Some more precisions (Score:5, Informative)
What is not said in TFA.
The three step mentionned are optionnal. You can be banned from internet at the first time.
And the decision is not up to judges, as we can think, but to a new and "independent" (read leaded by the majors) entity. So very little to no possibility to contest the punition, since it's not french court that rule over it. Meh...
Moreover, the law try to push forward filtering of content, in order to detect "illegal" file sharing. That could prove useful to control population, in the future, isn't it ?
And if the media would accept to talk about it, maybe people could try and fight against this project, but you hardly hear a word about it out of computer oriented websites.
We're in for a wild time...
Wrong answer to the wrong problem (Score:5, Informative)
The trend nowadays in France is to complain about purchase power.
But the goverment is unwilling to lower taxes and the reccord industry is unwilling to lower their profits margin.
for instance a NIN CD sells 8 UKP (10EUR) the same CD sells 22EUR in France.
go figure why people are pirating
While the law may seem fair... (Score:4, Informative)
As a french citizen, I don't really disagree with the principle of this law, but to see our government act like the RIAA's lap dog is very unnerving. And the fact that the ministry of culture seems completely out of touch with today's technology annoys me even more (Not long ago this ministry published a tender for translation of their websites. They specifically asked for automated translation. Let's just say the translators union was not very pleased, and sent them a letter, along with an man-made english translation of it, and a french translation of the english letter made by google translate. The original letter and the google one had not much in common...)
All of these points are good and ignored (Score:5, Informative)
As a member of April [april.org], the French free software association, I have been following this nonsense since it started. We have raised those issues already. W have been in touch with government officials, and this much is clear: they don't get it, because they don't care. The Sarkozy government is about as corrupt and authoritarian as the Bush administration, and similarly incompetent.
(Even Chirac, who didn't have the most spotless of records to say the least, had at least surrounded himself with competent and well meaning people.)
To illustrate this point, there's no better story than that of former member of parliament Cazenave. He was a member of Sarkozy's (and Chirac's) party, UMP, and one of free software's best advocate in the legislative branch. But before the last election, Sarkozy decided to give the party's nomination for that district instead to convicted felon Carignon. I shit you not. Carignon lost to the socialist candidate, in a district that had never voted left in decades.
Anyway, we have been in touch with members of several parliaments (assembly, senate, european), and have found strong allies. Former Prime Minister and current MEP Rocard for example was instrumental in defeating software patents in the European Parliament, and he voiced strong opposition to this current nonsense.
But we know how Sarkozy operates, he's learned from the worst, and, like Tom DeLay, he's going to strongarm his party's members in the legislative to toe the party line, even if they have reservations.
Re:Democracy; and the easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
Haha... you clearly don't work in France. Fired for misuse of the companies internet connection?
That's really not as easy as you seem to think. It's not even legal for the company to monitor your internet usage!
Re:three warnings? (Score:3, Informative)
Blah, there's is simply no law against downloading. It isn't a crime. It isn't even copyright infringement. If you want to introduce some bullshit "3 strikes and you're out" law, you have to actually introduce laws to make downloading a crime (or even copyright infringement) first, then you can try your extra stupid 3 strikes law.
Re:All of these points are good and ignored (Score:3, Informative)
The Sarkozy government is about as corrupt and authoritarian as the Bush administration, and similarly incompetent.
(Even Chirac, who didn't have the most spotless of records to say the least, had at least surrounded himself with competent and well meaning people.)
This starts to make sense when you realise they were/are comparing Sarkozy to Blair.
I love Linux (Score:1, Informative)
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:16:3E:72:42:c2
New MAC address!
Re:three warnings? (Score:5, Informative)
if I get caught speeding i get fined instantly
You're not, however, denied the use of roads.
Re:Democracy; and the easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
as a matter of fact I do work in France.
while not easy, you can certainly be fired over Internet misuse, especially if it involves installing dialers and such on a computer.
beside, monitoring is allowed as long as the personnel is informed and it is declared to the CNIL.
Re:I guess.. (Score:4, Informative)
That's a fairly gross assumption on your behalf.
France, being french speaking, have their own unique music market, in addition to international markets.
In support of that, 90% of top-10 selling artists are french [SNEP/IFPI, 2001]
I am splitting hairs though - the leading ISP here, Free.fr has a live music streaming service already - http://www.deezer.com [deezer.com] - No cost, no restrictions. That's a pretty decent sweetner already.
They're not going broke at all (Score:5, Informative)
Free [www.free.fr] provides 28Mb/s ADSL2+ with free international VoIP, free basic TV over IP for 29 euro a month. No capping whatsoever, awesome network quality, they also are the first to provide IPv6 to all their customers, and they make record profits. That's because they invested heavily in infrastructure and logistics, developed their own hardware (both set top box and DSLAMs), and managed to take advantage of significant economies of scale.