French Assembly Adopts 3-Strikes Bill 343
An anonymous reader writes "After lots of turmoil, including a surprise rejection and a European amendment against it, Sarkozy's 3 strikes law has just been passed by the French Assembly [in French]: 'The first warning mails ... should be sent in the coming fall. In case of second offenders, the first disconnections should start beginning 2010.'"
tit for tat (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you just wish that polititions were subject to three strikes too? Get caught three times in a lie, or claiming invalid expenses, or outright graft, and you get a life time ban on holding any political office ( or lobbying ), don't pass go, don't collect any of your pensions, just get the f*ck out of here.
Cant wait till they catch themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
I should imagine that some French Government organization will be caught downloading allegedly illegal content. Then, of course, the government will have to follow the letter of the law and cut off its own Internet Service. That should be fun to watch. Or, someone will get fired, internet service will not be suspended and they will reference Nixon's famous quote, about if they do it its not illegal, or they will reference Bush, who followed Nixon's fine example of little emperorism.
Re:Vive La Nation (Score:5, Interesting)
But I won't feel much sympathy when the cut-off peasants storm his gates holding pitchforks, hot pokers and rope.
Entertaining as the thought might be, both you and I know that this won't happen. The worst that will happen is another few cars getting lit up, which gives him another excuse to "get tough on crime".
It might be interesting to note that in the UK a similar proposal [bbc.co.uk] is rearing its ugly head, and ISPs are "opposing" [bbc.co.uk] it, although ulterior motives are more likely to be the true reason, as found in the bottom of the article:
He said that ISPs might be willing to consider a graduated response to tackling piracy if content providers were willing to pay distribution fees to ISPs.
The rough translation of that sentence reads as "It's not really our problem, unless you pay us to make it our problem."
I think the next couple of years are going to be interesting at the very least to see what our lawmakers are going to cook up to monitor our activities (if the whole ordeal doesn't get outsourced to the private sector), and more interesting will be the creative ways around those systems.
only grandmothers will use internet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or internet cafes will become REALLY popular places.
as for granmas... since they like to click on all these "fix your computer" and "you won" stuff, (not to forget about grandchildren that would be happy to use granmas computer), it is just a matter of time till someone will bombard the France with trickery ads that will download some easily trackable music. Once more then some percentage of population (say 15-20% ?) will not be able use internet from homes, then or the ISPs will put a blind eye on it (they losing customers), or new amendments will have to pass. Or they will create go the way as auto insurance does -- you can connect, but the fees are prohibitive.
just speculating...
Bot nets (Score:5, Interesting)
A question for the French /.ers (Score:2, Interesting)
So,
How long do you think it will be before someone figures out a way to use/fake Sarkozy's IP addresses (or all government IP's?) for obviously illegal P2P and get them knocked off the net?
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:3, Interesting)
Does that show historical values, like, say, WW2?
Re:A better question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a shame such systems are not already in widespread use in the west. On the far east, Japan and South Korea in particular, fully encrypted P2P applications like Share and Perfect Dark are more popular than BitTorrent. Both of those require high speed internet connections, with a high upload rate in particular, so perhaps that's why it's taking longer for them to catch on here.
Re:How much did it pay? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Pommes frites" always confused me. From my high school French I learned that "pommes" means apples, and that potatoes was actually "pommes de terre", ie, apples of the earth, or ground-apples. That makes sense. "frites" essentially means fried.
So "pomme frites" means "french fries" but literally translates to "fried apples". That's weird.
Re:A better question is... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, I break the law every time I use ssh. Wait, we all do it anyway.
Re:A better question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plagiarism isn't the same as not recognizing copy "rights". To plagiarize is to take credit for some else's work as if it were you're own. Not recognizing copy "rights" means copy and distributing something that is in you possession, with no claims to authorship. The former is unethical and the latter is natural.
Re:A better question is... (Score:1, Interesting)
I thought encryption was illegal in France...literally. You're only allowed to use hashing there.
Re:Sarkozy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:it's a crime (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about California's laws on domestic violence, but in Texas I was arrested twice for defending myself against my wife. (I was young and stupid... don't judge) The first time, I was restraining her wrists. The second time she was swinging a katana at me while I was holding our son. Fortunately it was before the felony charge became mandatory. I am not married to her any longer and haven't been for a very long time, but I have to say, the way the law is enforced is really very unfair and uneven. They did eventually arrest her for the assault with a deadly weapon but later dropped those charges... she wouldn't stop crying. What women get away with amazes me.
In any case, my point is that perhaps this first "violent felony" was a guy just like me or you who wanted only to prevent harm to himself where the assaulting party was a woman.
I can still see and hear the Irving, TX cops telling me "yes!" when I asked "was I supposed to just LET her kill me?" The whole experience was surreal...
Re:Obama (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you think is more important - limiting the difference between the rich and the poor, or increasing everyone's standard of living? You do realize there's a trade-off between these two goals, right? If you can only do one, do you want to live better, or just make that rich bastard live worse so that you're better by comparison.
These are honest questions, not flamebait. Personally, I wish everyone well, and would like eveyrone to live as well as they can manage. But it seems a great many people are offended by others living better thna they do, regardless of how ell they live themselves, and would be quite happy to cut off their noses to spite their faces. Which camp are you in?
Hadopi Law: Spyware Provisions (Score:5, Interesting)
An element of Hadopi which hasn't received much or enough attention as yet, is a section which specifies steps that can be taken by computer users to ensure that they will not be found liable under the new regime. The following is a rough translation of the relevant sections, taken from the text of the law in its current state, as found here. Bear with me, it is torturous, some explanatory notes are added in bold...
Art. L. 331-30. â" After consultation with those developing security systems designed to prevent the illicit use of access to a communication service to the public online (internet!), or electronic communications, people whose business it to offer access to such a service (ISPs) as well as those companies governed by title 2 of the book (Intellectual Property Code) and rightsholders organizations (ie SACEM etc), the High Authority will make public the pertinent functional specifications that these measures must comprise so as to be considered, in its eyes, as valid exoneration of the responsibility of the access subscriber (internet user!) as defined in article L. 336-3.
At the end of a certified evaluation procedure, and taking into consideration conformity with the specifications set out in the previous paragraph and their effectiveness, the High Authority will issue a list certifying the security software whose use will validly exonerate the access holder (internet user!) from their responsibility under the terms of article L. 336-3. This certification will be periodically revised.
Mmmh. So what the law intends is to set up a meeting between consultation with security software vendors, antipiracy organizations and ISPs to decide what software you need to install on your machine, so that they can be sure that you behave yourself. If you don't fancy installing their device, then you'll just have to swallow any liability consequent to someone else using your machine or accessing your connection.
Art. L. 336-3. â" The access holder to an online service of communication to the public (internet!) or electronic communications is obliged to ensure that thus access is not used for purposes of reproduction, display, making available, or communication to the public, of works protected by copyright or a neighboring right, without the authorisation of the holders of those rights set out in books 1 and 2 (of the Intellectual Property Code), where required.
Failure to satisfy the obligation set out in the preceding paragraph can result in a punishment according to the conditions defined by article L. 331-25.
No sanction can be taken regarding the access holder in the following cases:
1. If the access holder (internet user!) installed on of the security systems appearing on the list mentioned in the second paragraph of article L. 331-30;
2. If the attack on the rights set out in the first paragraph of the present article is the work of a person who has fraudulently used the access to the online communication service;
3. In case of force majeure.
The failure of the access holder to the obligation defined in the first paragraph will not have the effect of imposing criminal liability.
Apart from finding the last paragraph a bit puzzling â" the list of exceptions exempts from all liability, the coda refers only to criminal liability â" and the language atrocious, it's obvious the whole framework is mad and unacceptable. Imposing such strict liability unless users agree to install spyware, almost certainly connected to remote databases, is intrusive as well as dangerous.
How can this not amount to a wholesale surveillance of online activity? Who will have access to the data collected and transmitted by these 'security systems' (sic), and how will that access be managed? Will the security systems be transp
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:4, Interesting)
You do need a passport. Well, not need need, since no one is checking it at the borders, but if the police in another EU country ask for it you need to be able to present it. Some places a EU citizenship card doubles as a passport but they don't have those in the UK or eastern europe.
Bullshit. I've spent 8 months in the UK with no passport. EU law says if you have an EU citizenship, your ID is fully functional as a passsport throughout the EU. The only place they checked my papers from London to Budapest was the UK-French border, and even there the driver remarked that they're only doing that because we have a lot of dark-skinned passengers with an apparent genome line not originally from Europe.
Yes, racism exists, and it's based on experience.
Re:Please read the *whole* post before responding! (Score:2, Interesting)
can you produce the movie that is on that DVD?
Had you read your parent's full post, you would have discovered this:
We still need people to create content (we call them artists).
He also says some words about editors, producers and retailers near that bit. I suggest you read it, it's quite interesting.
It puts the whole "DVDs should be cheap" bit in perspective.
Artists won't go away just because they get paid less. Speaking as an artist myself, I can testify that it's a calling, and most artists would keep on doing what they love, even if they didn't get paid. Of course, they'd have a smaller budget... but good things can still be made on the cheap. Audio equipment and software has become so cheap that ordinary people on a shoestring budget can produce an album surpassing the typical audio quality of major bands, and the way things are going, movies will become just as cheap and easy to make.
The notion that art will somehow stop unless the MAFIAA gets total leeway in prosecuting pirates is a widely propagated myth.