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Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Windows users..... RUN!
We all have broken the law (Score:5, Insightful)
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Our only protections are the state's lack of interest in us as individuals, or aggressive protesting by the mob if we are visible enough.
Soapbox, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. Use in that order.
Re:We all have broken the law (Score:5, Funny)
I personally would use the soap and ammo boxes as long range weapons, the ballot box as my preferred melee weapon and the jury box I'd probably class as a weapon of mass destruction. Bloody heavy things though and not that easy to find and carry and to be honest I still prefer the old torch and Molotov for most of my "angry mob" duties, but I admire your attempt to innovate.
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I wonder how secure the Internet connections owned by the members of the French National Assembly are. Maybe a tracker could be set up on Sarkozy's Minitel terminal.
Considering that the French president has apparently gotten off scott-free for actual copyright infringement [slashdot.org] (I say apparently because I've not heard anything about the infringement since that story in 2008), I suspect it doesn't matter how secure or insecure it is, nothing would happen.
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WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, you're replying to a comment about France's legislature passing a very enforceable law. They are defining liability: if your agent (computer) does something, you are responsible for what it did.
This is almost the exact opposite of the phenomenon that you're talking about. It simplifies law immensely (assuming they wrote it generally enough) and on top of that..
People say users can't deal with security issues, and maybe they are right, but it's also true that users are the best and only people who even have the slightest chance. Users don't, but nobody else can. Saying their computers are their computers, is a damn good step on the road to progress.
Of course, you can't have the principle in place that users are responsible for their computers, without also making sure they have the power to control their computers. If your computer is doing things that you don't like, and if you are responsible for whatever it does do, then it's a requirement that you be able to maintain it.
There are some rather obvious implications, and we should expect a lot of complaining about such a principle from the very parties that bought this law. They are this close [imagine me holding my finger and thumb close together] to outlawing DRM, since no computer can serve two masters.
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Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Interesting)
It also raises the question of whether an organisation becomes responsible for any piracy which occurs as a result of a thirdparty sneaking onto their network. Say, the French government being responsible if a bunch of hackers start downloading pirated material using their network. Wouldn't a judge be obliged to cut that network off immediately?
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My completely humble suggestion that has absolutely nothing to do with my age would be 27 ;)
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At what age do you suggest the law should no longer apply?
A few decades after you're dead, perhaps. Just like copyrights.
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In the spirit of providing a car analogy, if a dealership sells you a car as being street-legal, and a police officer later pulls you over about some aftermarket street-illegal modifications that were already present prior to the sale, why should you be thrown in jail for it?
Short answer: yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Long answer: this is the death of non-corporate backed hotspots.
Thankfully this piece of shit is 99% guaranteed to be blocked by the Constitutional Council.
But it's typical of Sarkoleon's governance. The media coverage of this whole thing has been almost as sickening as that of Fox wrt Obama's health care plan: unashamedly ignorant propaganda, ridiculous talking points, and Godwin galore. Did you know that opponents of the law were Nazi collaborators? That's what the head of a local Mafiaa repeated on the m
"Troll", but quite right (Score:4, Insightful)
You've been marked troll, but you're quite right. The idea that the an average windows user can keep a PC secure, keep their wireless network secure, etc. is right up there with expecting the poor to get a fair trial in court. Admin is a day-in-day-out job of constant vigilence and few missteps -- by a professional-level definition of misstep. The average user probably makes their PC vulnerable in about 5 different ways for every new day they use it.
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I'm french, and have been following this law with attention (and disgust).
They threw in this provision because they'll prosecute people based on IP adresses collected on BT trackers and filesharing programs by private firms. When opponents of the law pointed out that it's trivial to gain access to a private wifi network, the ministry of culture decided to patch the law with this provision.
The "funny" thing is that in order to prove you've secured your network, you'll have to buy and install a non-free,
Already done? (Score:3, Interesting)
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That was private company suing people by using bended law.
We are talking government agency doing prosecution in France and government-supervised and enforced internet disconnection as punishment backed by law that was crafted only to support their actions. Only hope here is that it will be like all governments agencies - bureaucratic hell that does not manage to do anything, because otherwise, they can quite a lot of power in their hands.
im fed up with (Score:4, Insightful)
to france: stop letting your government divert from the real issues. get back on track with employment and reform.
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Im fed up with every government trying to legislate safety and functionality
Fixed that for you. You had three extra words on the end of that sentence..
I wonder if there's a provision (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if they included a provision that excludes French National Assembly members from the three strikes.
Given enough time any connection can be compromised and if France's script kiddies are like all the others I wouldn't put it past them to pwn a couple of assembly member's connections. Since you are responsible for what happens on your connection...
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And the what will happen, indeed... Script kiddie will be found and prosecuted, politician unharmed (on contrary, getting easy sympathy/hero points for being insidiously attacked by some basement dweller that is pissed off because he can not get his dose of hentai. Word terrorist will be passed along and will not be off mark - point of terrorism is to inspire 'terror' to pressure opposition to change their politics. And this would fit perfectly, now wouldn't it.). Lets face it, for doing something as dumb a
Merde! (Score:4, Interesting)
If at first you don't succeed, bribe and bribe again.
How will this pass the European Unions "right to free speech" when you have no internet connection to communicate with anyone? Oh silly me, it's the French we're talking about, they never did give a cr@p about European laws unless it was in their favour.
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While i agree that this is bad, you are talking shit, "free speech" doesn't guarantee you an internet connection any more than it guarantees you a phone.
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Sad trend (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sad trend (Score:4, Interesting)
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Capitalism works very well on small individual items but clearly cannot deal with massive projects.
What does this have to do with capitalism? It's a government action not something having to deal with private ownership of capital. It just bugs me how so many government actions are blamed on private entities. Especially when the solution to the alleged "capitalist" or "corporatist" harm is more government action or regulation. That's fighting fire by throwing some gasoline on.
Don't get too worked up (Score:5, Informative)
It passed, but with a 285-225 vote, there's noticeably significant opposition. And that's just the lower house; it still has to go to a "parliamentary commission of seven senators and seven members of the lower house to pen a final draft that's acceptable to both houses". And that's if it's not blocked by another constitutional appeal.
So, just typical politicking bullshit you'd see across the pond over here, or really anywhere, nowadays, so that Jack can say he was for it and accuse Jane of being against it, to further some hatespeech... er, campaigning. I can't get too worked up until it's actually for real; there's just too much of this nonsense nowadays.
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like fo rreal , rapists , murderers and other real crime that hurts people?
I think you'll find that laws are already in place to deal with such crimes.
3 strikes on 3 strikes (Score:5, Insightful)
All countries should have a law that prevents their governments from being allowed to repeatedly reattempt to pass a law the got turned down once already. Especially when the law has already been found to be unconstitutional.
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Re:3 strikes on 3 strikes (Score:4, Insightful)
well have a time limit. So you can only submit a law for (re)consideration say once every 3 years.
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I know that sounds appealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Coverage at Ars also points out a provision that says, 'all Internet users must keep their connections "secure" and are responsible for what happens on them.
That sounds great, especially to those of us who have to deal with the Great Unwashed Masses PC problems, but most users are doing good to find the power switch. Making them responsible for what happens to the internals of their PC without their knowledge in a rapidly evolving threat landscape that even security professionals struggle with at times is blaming the victim. It's not their fault Windows is a highly porkable product.
They're teaching young people how to use computers in school but, with few exceptions, they're not teaching them how to use them safely. In many schools it would be the blind leading the blind in security education. Most teachers don't know enough about PC security to make any relevant contribution to solving the bigger problem. Ultimately, it's like trying to fight a fully involved house fire with a garden hose.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I am glad that it's someone else being heavy-handed and dickish for a change.
Secure? (Score:5, Insightful)
So saying that a connection must be secure immediately raises the question: how secure?
Are they responsible if a neighbor guesses a WEP password and downloads kiddie porn?
Are they responsible if they have a fully patched Windows box, with virus checking, but get compromised by a virus missed by those safeguards and become part of a botnet?
If a criminal breaks into the house while they're on vacation and makes a bunch of purchases with fraudulent credit card numbers, are they still responsible?
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Correction. I read the Ars article, and the trouble you can get into is regarding copyright violations that occur on your connection.
So all of my examples in the parent post should be modified to talk about copyright infringement as the illegal activity.
My analogy... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the copyright industry wants you kicked off the net for three mere accusations of copyright infringement. That could be as little as three songs. The songs sell for a buck on Amazon and iTunes. So for a mere three bucks the copyright industry wants you banned from the net for eternity.
Let's imagine a different law. Let's imagine that the banking industry gets fed up with people stealing pens out of their lobbies. These pens are expensive, a buck each. Imagine that a law is enacted stating that any person merely accused by a bank of stealing three pens is banned from the entire banking industry for the rest of his or her life.
Does anyone think such a law has any chance to be passed? Does anyone seriously think that such a law makes sense? Of course it would not and of course it does not. But in the crazy world of copyrights, people actually take the proposed three strikes law seriously.
This is not unsurprising. (Score:2)
As your friendly conservative I must insist everyone stop picking on France!
France has always had a huge tradition of strong copyright law that in their mind, protects the artist. They foisted the Bern convention on the world and would probably make it so that the artist and his family would have copyrights for all eternity if they could. It's entirely different set of values that drives this. Even though the piece of it may not seem logical, we need to be culturally aware. We as American (and the Briti
I wonder how... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Conservatives never learn (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't treat the symptom, you treat the cause. Otherwise you may as well be jerking off. What causes crime? Poverty, lack of prospects for a future, and ignorance. You may deter one individual from committing more crimes by putting him in jail for life but that does nothing to dissuade the one after him and the one after that. Yes, there will always be the bad seeds, the one no amount of opportunity and guidance will help. But there will be fewer of them than what we have now if we address the causes.
Want to know how to set the drug problems straight in this country? Legalize and regulate the shit. Those who are hooked on the hard shit like heroin will get their maintenance dose from a government clinic for free. Those who aren't yet hooked will find it harder to score in the first place as the street supply dries up. And pot? For fuck's sake, give the growers licenses and let them operate like micro-breweries. Keep big business out of it, don't let their marketing departments start trying to manipulate public demand. Can you imagine how much peace would be had in Mexico if illicit drug money from the US dried up? Hell, just imagine knowing your flat won't get broken into by a junkie looking for shit to fence.
Politicians don't have the fucking stones to put forward this kind of legislation.
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Can you imagine how much peace would be had in Mexico if illicit drug money from the US dried up?
I'm just trying to imagine what the thousands upon thousands of people working drug-related jobs would do instead. We've seen thousands of soldiers defecting to the drug lords at once, and the like.
Re:Conservatives never learn (Score:4, Insightful)
What causes crime? Poverty, lack of prospects for a future, and ignorance.
Setting aside for now the issue of whether downloading copyrighted material is a crime, etc. etc., do you really think that *poverty, lack of prospects for a future, and ignorance* is what drives leechers to download bluray rips ?!
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Re:Conservatives never learn (Score:4, Interesting)
No, piracy is widespread because it's easier to download than going to a shop to buy a real product.
As long as the pirated product is equivalent to a real product (and in some cases, it's worse due to the protection), I don't see why I should buy a product, except encouraging its creators.
Politicians don't have the fucking stones to put forward this kind of legislation.
No, the politicians know very well from where the money comes.
They are elected by people, but they can punish them as long as they can get a few bucks for themselves.
Politicians have renounced to care for their voters, and this is especially true for the french president.
I'm a french guy, and I can only notice that Sarkozy just runs for himself, as most of the french society now.
He dreams about the 'american model', where only money matters, where there is no social insurance and where the employees can be fired without notice.
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So I can have Windows Zombies unhooked in France? (Score:2)
So I can have Windows Zombies unhooked in France?
Great. Used correctly this law could raise the bar for internet security and security awarenes on behalf of the end-user.
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Of course, it is quite entertaining when I am on my Linux box and a Windows looking "Warning" comes up saying the my "C:" drive is infected and that I need to run the "anti-virus" that has popped up.
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Don't browse porn sites without noscript
Fixed that for you ;)
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Stop Microsoft's monopole
Down with Microsoft's evil magnets! Dipole magnets for everybody!