Major Battle Brewing Between French Gov't and ISPs 111
Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson has been following HADOPI (France's three strikes law) a lot lately, and the latest developments are that the French ISPs and the French government are edging closer to a full-on war over compensation. The French government apparently requested that ISPs send an invoice of the bills after a certain period of time, but the French ISPs don't feel this is good enough — probably because of worries that the compensation the government will ultimately provide won't be enough. The ISPs are demanding adequate compensation, and if the government doesn't give it to them, they simply will not hand over evidence required to enforce HADOPI law. While HADOPI demands that ISPs cooperate, speculation suggests that if the government takes ISPs to court, the ISPs will simply rely on constitutional jurisprudence to shield them from liability (translation)."
Never gonna happen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Never gonna happen (Score:4, Funny)
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Reminds me of the time A&T turned off a shit load of FBI wire taps cause they weren't paying the bills.
Where the government won't look out for your rights the corporations will, spying on a million people costs a lot of money and it ain't coming of their their profit margin if they can help it!
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Good one! Thanks for the laugh :-)
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I believe last time this happened, beheading was involved....
Nope [wikipedia.org].
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Getting the French government to surrender? That seems unlikely.
The only thing the French can host with success is an invasion.
Food trough water.
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I don't like the French, but if it wasn't for them, you'd still be drinking tea.
So are you implying that the french government is the Only government, nay group of people, that have the ability to pull a successful revolution in the past few decades of time?
Or just implying that the past few decades never happened?
Unless you can somehow prove that a bunch of angry people with guns and decades of time on their hands to use them are 100% unable to do what the french did, then your statement is false.
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No, he isn't.
And I'm not implying that you are piss-poor at comprehension and have no knowledge of history.
I'm bloody well telling you that you are piss-poor at comprehension and have no knowledge of history.
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So are you implying that the french government is the Only government, nay group of people, that have the ability to pull a successful revolution in the past few decades of time?
So you're implying that the US War of Independence took place in the past few decades?..
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Well, when it's the French people against the French government, they invent cool new devices... but what is cooler than the guillotine?
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Certainly much more magical than "there are no drapes".
Unless she's that chick out of the Star Trek movie...
Gotta side with the ISPs on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Monitoring and fulfilling information requests costs time and money. If they're being required to do so constantly, chances are they had to bring on temporary staff to keep up with the worklog. It's wholly unfair to demand this of them, and yet not compensate them.
Then again, "fair", "business", and "government" don't go together, so ::shrug::.
Re:Gotta side with the ISPs on this one (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not necessarily unfair.
Even if I do not agree in regulating the net.
business need to deal with the unpleasant results of their business as well as making money.
The oil companies for example are not paid by the government to run safe rigs and to clean up their spills, the government forces them to do that if they want to remain in the oil business.
Re:Gotta side with the ISPs on this one (Score:4, Informative)
Using your examples of oil companies, it is true that they aren't necessarily payed to run safe rigs...however, the government is a huge customer of theirs (military, government official vehicles, etc) as well as providing them legislation that works in their favor and tax breaks/keeping tax loopholes open.
They aren't directly payed money, but approve or disapprove, they're still compensated.
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Well you could say the same of ISPs, the government is a huge customer of most industries and tend to pass pro industry laws.
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But either way are you actually saying that any company should be able to do whatever it wants, as long as the government does not pay it to do otherwise.
For example: I could start up a dog poop removal business. and when I remove the poop from a house that pays me to do that I just throw it on the neighbours yard?
for me it is a win/win.
and sure the law forbids this, but by your logic, laws should not apply to businesses.
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But either way are you actually saying that any company should be able to do whatever it wants, as long as the government does not pay it to do otherwise.
That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the government is specifically asking a business to do something it would otherwise not do on its own.
and sure the law forbids this, but by your logic, laws should not apply to businesses.
I think you're twisting my point. All I'm saying is that the government is requesting a company to do something that it otherwise would never do. This request will cost a lot of time and effort to comply with, cost and effort that a smaller ISP might not be able to shoulder on its own while still maintaining a minimum level of service quality.
I n
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But the government is not requesting, it is demanding.
which is law, or close enough to it.
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That I agree with.
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The oil companies for example are not paid by the government to run safe rigs and to clean up their spills, the government forces them to do that if they want to remain in the oil business.
They may require safe rigs and to clean up spills, but they don't expect the oil company to ensure all users of their oil aren't speeding or breaking the law in some other respect.
The ISP's are required to run a safe network that doesn't, say, electrocute anyone. If they dig up the roads to install more wires they're required to put the road back together afterwards, and so on. Expecting them to also police their network at an individual user level is not the same thing, and deserves compensation.
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What unpleasant results? If they are operating as a dumb pipe, at the end of the line it's the user who is 'apparently' abusing it. This about the same as hydro, water or NG. If a user snaps a pipe in their basement or plays captn' sparkler against their mains box, it's sure not the service providers problem if they die.
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The difference is that the oil spills and the risks caused by unsafe rigs are a consequence of the oil company's business.
The costs imposed on the ISPs are purely a result of government regulation.
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But they are both the result of government regulation.
The government regulation that says, unsafe work conditions are not allowed, costs oil companies money and they would not have as safe conditions if the government did not enforce it.
Putting aside the issue of net neutrality it is very similar situation in my opinion.
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Are the Oil companies required to monitor the use you make of your car once you've put their oil in it ?
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Are the ISPs required to monitor all the data you download, after it is downloaded and on your computer?
No they just handle their side of it, when the data goes through them into your computer.
As oil companies need to make their workplaces safe and not cause huge environmental disasters.
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The oil companies for example are not paid by the government to run safe rigs and to clean up their spills, the government forces them to do that if they want to remain in the oil business.
That's an incredibly bad analogy, so here's a better one -- the oil companies aren't required to pay for investigations of bank robbers who use petroleum in their getaway cars, which is exactly like this is.
The oil spill thing is more like an ISP screwing up and bringing internet service for all providers' customers to a
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The ISPs aren't causing the harm, their customers are (allegedly). It's like expecting a plumbing supplies company to foot the bill for BP's oil spill when there was nothing wrong with the parts it supplied, they were just used wrong.
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What do you mean "again"? Most people only get concerned when I'm NOT talking to myself :p
Wow Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
So the government buckled to pressure from large 'content-producing' corporations - and our only defense is are other large corporations who don't want to comply because it hurts their wallets.
Not because they think its a bad idea, respect their customers or whatever, because it hurts their wallet.
What a giant mess this world is - money driven. When are the revised copyright laws coming out? No there's no large company which wants that, oh allright - Never O'Clock
Re:Wow Brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)
They should cut out the middle man - let the content producers compensate the ISPs directly. Surely it's a small price for them to pay if it's going to prevent billions of Euros in lost sales due to piracy, it's also a short-term thing because the biggest pirates will disconnected within a couple of months.
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The biggest pirates have been using rapidshare and other similar services for months if not years... and these services are not covered by Hadopi. Only true p2p networks are (Donkey and Torrent, mainly)
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let the content producers compensate the ISPs directly.
That's a dangerous precedent to set; you would then have the copyright holders paying the ISPs to give the police information on what people are doing on the internet. I don't know if I like the idea of corporations hiring armies of private investigators to snoop on us so they can report the results to the government. In France, at least, I'm willing to bet they'd rather leave the whole thing in the hands of the government. Over there, they trust the government more than private interests.
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It's no worse that the government taking your money to pay to enforce laws designed to benefit mostly foreign copyright holders. It's the ultimate anti-Robin Hood.
They oppose it, that's a legal way to contest (Score:2)
Part of Sarkonazy's merry band of big content bitches propaganda was that it would not be costly to the taxpayer. This will make them look bad. Plus the more that shit is delayed the better the chances that it get quashed by the EU before it starts doing damage.
Why do people allow this to continue... (Score:2)
all over the world?
Why aren't people voting these assholes out or taking BACK their countries?
I don't get it.... I must be from a different mold.
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The same reason you allow murder and other shit to still happen. There is nothing an individual can do about it.
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People get away with murder because nobody knows [for sure] that they did it.
We know exactly which politicians vote for terrible laws.
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So tell me, oh wise one, which is the "correct" choice here?
I usually see 5 or so political parties represented on my ballot. I'd say the correct choice is one that isn't Republican or Democrat based on your complaints. That leaves 3 other choices. Maybe you don't have as many where you live, but from what I understand the Libertarian party is pretty good at getting ballot access. Personally, the only party I wouldn't vote for if it were the only alternative is the Natural Law Party, but I've always had a Libertarian candidate to vote for in any race that also
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Answer:
1. Lobbying
2. The 'man in the street' doesn't care
3. The media can always be enticed to speak in favour if you advertise a lot
3b. Adverising costs money - large companies have money
4. Probably a stupid 'two-party' system so nothing to choose from anyway
5. "I'll vote for them because my parents voted for them, and my parents before that"
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Yeah we used to go oldschool forks and guns on the kings back in the days, but now we're all about elections you know, and they only come every 5 years.
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Ummm, we have pirate parties forming as we speak. The Pirate Party even has two members of the European parliament now.
I'm definitely voting 'Pirate' in the next elections ... and I've never actually got off my ass to vote before (and I've been eligible to vote since the 1980s).
I'm not particularly for piracy, I just don't believe the RIAAs lies and I don't think politicians should be wasting time listening to them either.
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because when election time comes around, people vote based on candidates policies on health, or defence, or education, so copyright reform stops being important. And, once people are voted in, they go off on 4 or 5 years of totally unaccountable power where most of their decisions are heavily influenced by lobbying from groups with money (in this case, the 'content industry').
Kinda makes sense. (Score:1)
This same Industry has been ignoring ISP and internet for over a decade before realising they had to stop living in the stone age and now ISP should PAY for the music and film industry own ignorance and lack of vision ?
WTF ?
The Music and film industry doesn't want to hear about global licensing and is still clearly unable to provide consumers with digital offers that would be at least attractive enough to be considered a worthy a
Europe (Score:3, Insightful)
So in one part of Europe, internet access is a fundamental human right. In another part of Europe, it can taken away entirely for the minor crime of copyright infringement.
When is the EU civil war coming? There needs to be a Scandinavian Lincoln to conquer France and free the oppressed.
Re:Europe (Score:4, Funny)
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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The rest of the Vikings who stayed at home learned how to work together and survive peacefully with what they have.
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I am very amazed that this happened in Europe. But the french government has a history of that. The EU wanted to ban cosmetic animal testing, but the french government was lobbied by a ton of cosmetic industries [who remain anonymous = 0 public backlash] and it collapsed.
Same thing here - turning into a 'little USA' it seems.
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"...but the french government was lobbied by a ton of cosmetic industries..."
Turning a little USA??? Interesting. Perfume, France, HELLO? You apparently seem to be completely unaware that Paris is home to some very old and powerful cosmetics manufacturers for hundreds of years. Some, I'm sure. are older than the US. You cut out animal testing, you cut the throats of a French industry, one of the few France has left. I think if anything the US would be taking their queue from the French. But we won't let facts stop us now, will we?
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You cut out animal testing, you cut the throats of a French industry, one of the few France has left.
In what way? Plenty of other comestic companies seem to survive just fine without needing to test their products on animals. Exactly what is so special about these French companies?
I think if anything the US would be taking their queue from the French.
A queue of what?
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You're mistaking the EU for a country, it is not. It's an alliance of sovereign nations (and therefore quite different to the United States).
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There is an EU constitution. There is a US constitution. The EU is a union of states. The US is a federation of states. Sounds pretty similar to me.
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Those of us who are familiar with your wife's genitalia won't disagree with you.
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could you consider how it all works, rather than just comparing words and pronouncing them to be the same? Would that be too much to ask?
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The EU now works a lot like the U.S. started out. Just give it a few years.
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Only France didn't ratify it (among others), so there is none.
ISPs are not police forces (Score:3, Insightful)
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Banks are regulated, ISP not so much. Pass a law to regulate ISP to do such, then ALL ISP can charge the customers for the cost of doing it instead of billing the government. Then the ISPs will be happy to comply because the consumers won't have any where else to go as an alternative.
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Well.. banks can continue to make money on frozen accounts. And.. banks can pay out less money to depositors in order to cover their costs of compliance. Your only choice is to hold cash rather than deposit.
ISPs on the other hand, charge fees. Watch the ISPs, assuming they lose in court, attach a "government compliance fee" in a separate line item. Just to make the government's "it won't cost taxpayers" line appear as the BS it is. Unless, of course, there are lots of French taxpayers without net access.
Alt
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Police forces, for one thing, get an upfront budget instead of being asked to "police the country first and send us the bill later, we'll decide if we pay you back or not."
Yeah and the cops are pretty pissed right now: 2 days ago they caught a guy after 45 days on the run who did a casino heist next door to where I live. He and his partner slugged the cops with machine guns like in bad Hollywood movies (one dead). Today the guy's been freed 'temporarily' (there's no bail here). And they want to jail you for downloading some Johnny Halliday (an antique and lousy french rocker who happens to be best pal with the prez) ?!? Well, guess what, don't be surprised if nobody trusts th
Not enough anti-piracy laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly there needs to be more anti-piracy laws that hardly affect the pirate and mostly just affect the average citizen! What would we do without these worthless bills, laws, and treaties that don't actually affect their intended target, take away more of everyones rights, and try to 'recover' imaginary profits that pirates 'stole'?
For the record (Score:1)
That's not all Isps (Score:2, Interesting)
that's just one ISP ..they refuse to give for free somithing that cost them (the identity of the ip owner).
the two other major ISP are more sympatize with it , like orange who give it for free(Albanel witch was the cuturel ministre in charge of hadopie for a time and just continually ridiculize herself is now in charge of Orange comuncation or something like that ).
SFR , (Vivendi universal Subsidiary) is like Orange "pro Hadopi"
some other ISP like FDN (the oldest french isp) are against hadopi with FREE ..
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Law that should not exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, the copyright lobby -- I forgot that their interests trump everything, even logic.
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You might have done better with "nigaud américains insensibles".
Hadopi scammers (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100902/02075110872.shtml [techdirt.com]
This is really turning out to be a FAIL of EPIC proportions.
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Bonus points to anyone who targets the entire French parliament.
a la guerre comme a la guerre (Score:2)
C'est la guerre!
Ca c'est la revolution!
Analogy time... (Score:1, Offtopic)
If I'm walking down the street and I drop my wallet, losing $1000, should I be able to sue random people to recover my loss?
If anybody's responsible for their "loss", it's the person who allowed a pristine copy to leave the movie studio. Haven't they heard of safes?
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OH, wait, that should be in the "Hurt Locker" thread... :-S