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.'"
How much did it pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
A better question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
How long until offenders start using the easily accessible encryption to avoid losing their connections? This will effectively make it harder for rights holders who have legitimate claims to go after offenders.
Whenever you pull the pendulum in one direction, it always swings back in the other one.
Re:A better question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me more about this encryption, and who I buy to outlaw it.
Is this a time to whip out terrorism? Muslims invasion of our culture? Or perhaps child pornography or French culture is the way to go this time.
Re:A better question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh man, do I want to do a rant against the French right now. But it'll be allright, just another felix culpa. Die gedänken sind frei, plagiarism is built into nature and the French politicians are swimming upstream; they'll tire sooner or later. Unfortunately this will mean that some families will start using iTunes stores and such, and no doubt the Big Four will take and twist those statistics into an I-Told-You-So.
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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.
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bands could say "fill up this bank account to $100k and we'll release our new album"
They already are [mymajorcompany.com]. This french website allows you to listen to a new band/artist's music for free, and chip in if you like it. When it reaches 70,000 euros the artist can record and release an album. The people who put the money together are invited to special events like private concerts, and get payed if the record label (ie the website) makes a profit on the sales of the album.
That's an awesome business model IMO, and it works : the (previously unknown) singer Gregoire released a successful album on thi
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I think you can. The encryption can be made so user-friendly that you may safely say that you weren't aware that the P2P application you have is using encryption. This is assuming encryption is wrong - you may just as well not care.
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> perhaps ... French culture is the way to go this time.
I'm sure Sarko is thinking something along these lines...
Si la transmission est encryptée, n'est-elle plus en français, n'est-ce pas? Ceci diluerait la langue française sacrée. Ceci doit être proscrit immédiatement! :-)
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Then they outlaw encryption without a license.
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Whenever you pull the pendulum in one direction, it always swings back in the other one.
Or they could just make a law against encryption, like some countries did against owning big amounts of gold after they left the gold standard.
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.
Encryption doesn't do much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Encryption cannot solve this problem. For filesharing to work, peers who have data must somehow advertise this fact. It doesn't matter if that data is encrypted; you still know what it is and who has it.
There are only two things filesharers can do:
1. Try to restrict the people that they advertise to so that they are not caught by the authorities. Here, there are conflicting goals: In order to have lots of data available, you want the largest network possible. But in order to keep things secure, you need as few people in on it as possible. So the more pressure the copyright groups put on the networks, the more the equilibrium shifts towards smaller (and less valuable) networks.
2. Give data to intermediaries who pass it on. Either this is done with something like onion routing, or sites like rapidshare are used as the intermediaries. This relies on being able to trust the intermediaries to whom you are adjacent. There also must be some incentive for the intermediaries to pass on your data. In the case of onion routing, the incentive is that other people's traffic serves as "noise" which your own traffic can "hide" in. In the case of Rapidshare et al, it's simply cash, through a combination of paid memberships and advertising revenue.
Neither #1 nor #2 are encryption, really, though #2 may involve some.
Re:Encryption doesn't do much. (Score:5, Informative)
Either this is done with something like onion routing, or sites like rapidshare are used as the intermediaries.
These are completely different approaches. Both use "intermediaries", but nested encryption is inherent in onion routing (and similar protocols as used e.g. by I2P), and there is no need to trust those adjacent to you, since they never know who you're communicating with or what data you're transferring. A site like Rapidshare, on the other hand, can see the content being shared as well as the IP addresses of both the uploader and the downloaders, and is thus fully capable of betraying all those involved.
There is also an additional incentive to participate in some onion-routing networks beyond the benefits of "background noise": the more bandwidth you make available to others, the better your own transfer rates become. (At least that's how I2P works.) It's rather similar to the incentive for seeding in BitTorrent itself.
Re:How much did it pay? (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet France Freedom Fries youz?
Re:How much did it pay? (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer "pommes frites". It sounds sexier.
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For sexy, I'd say "Give me your tots". Women really seem to strongly respond to that movie. You never get ignored when quoting Napoleon D. It's a really polarizing piece of film.
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"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.
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And this is why I wanna move down south and get sweet potato fries, cause the damn soviets would never eat those....
Does France even have baseball? (Score:2)
Really, I want to know. I know it's the "American Pasttime" but is the metaphor of "three strikes" even used there?
Re:Does France even have baseball? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course they have it there. They don't call it the "World Series" because it's limited to the Americas~.
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Sadle, this nerd site was written in Perl, which was a write-only language oddly popular in the 20th century. Perl scripts cannot be maintained, so they'd have to write Slashcode over again to add UTF-8 support (or add it back, didn't Slashcode support it briefly?).
For the Love of Bruni (Score:3, Informative)
I think that Carla Bruni, Sarkozy's wife and model/singer, is the real author of the bill. In fact, the two first met at a official function where Bruni had come to promote copyright enforcement and authors' rights. IMO, Sarkozy is just acting out of love for his wife. The man is dangerous.
Sarkozy (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait to see how this thing blows in his face.
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I can't wait to see how this thing blows in his face.
Eeeeew! I can wait. Bleah.
Re:Sarkozy (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand the appeal of *those* kinds of videos. Ick. Nevertheless I will defend to the death your right to free speech and free viewing of them.
Re:Sarkozy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sarkozy (Score:5, Funny)
Whoever's is nessesary, preferably the politicians though. ;)
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People who don't agree with the principles in the Declaration and writings of the U.S. Founders should move to the E.U.
Yeah, because healthy disagreement is intolerable in a functional democracy...
What does that even mean, anyway? The "US Founders" didn't even agree among themselves, let alone present a unified platform for the rest of us to consider. They were not a borg collective. Many of the US founders advocated slavery, and almost all of them advocated gender inequality. Maybe you've heard of the
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We just need to bring everyone online.
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Erh... you have been watching where it leads to?
Think back, if you can remember the "good ol' times". The internet was an exchange of information and idea, it was full of intelligent, witty people who connected and congreated to think up dreams that formed ideas which spun projects...
Then came AOL and the people that came with it...
Do I have to go on 'til we reach Web2.0?
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Doh! I didn't log in first...
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?
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The question is, which outcome will lead to a stable and prosperous society. Best evidence shows that humans decide whether they are prosperous based on their comparisons to their neighbors. The gap between the super wealthy and the very poor, therefor is the problem - especially as the middle and working classes continue to get poorer, while the very wealthy throw toga parties.
You did raise a false choice, based on some invalid conclusions. History has shown us that when the middle and lower classes prospe
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internet only services? (Score:5, Insightful)
With more and more gov services being available on the internet, does that mean that those disconnected won't be able to use said services?
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You are aware that there's a lot of offices (apparently California in particular) that won't do anything in person, anymore? And with the EU being usually more socialist than anywhere in the US, I can't see that being reasonably different.
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Sorry, just remembered, also, a majority of British unemployment offices are particularly bad for that, just to add to my point.
Vive La Nation (Score:5, Funny)
But I won't feel much sympathy when the cut-off peasants storm his gates holding pitchforks, hot pokers and rope.
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.
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But I won't feel much sympathy when the cut-off peasants storm his gates holding pitchforks, hot pokers and rope.
You mean old motherboards with pointy edges, unshielded power supplies and LAN cables?
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.
Re:tit for tat (Score:5, Insightful)
How about jail for incorrect expenses and graft 3 times. That's more than a mistake, that's fraud. Yet politicians get away with this shit way too often, regardless of country. Can anyone name a politician that was even *fired* for it, let alone charged? They're all allowed to resign, step down, or otherwise voluntarily leave office. I think that's wrong. Most jobs, you're caught pulling that stuff, you're escorted out of the building.
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YES!!!
Then we wouldn't have any politicians.
Sounds great actually, doesn't it?
Re:tit for tat (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a boss, who used to suggest with total seriousness that all politicians should be sent directly to jail after they serve their terms; without trial, without jury, straight from their table to their cell.
I just laughed at this as though it's a joke. But he never showed a joking manner with his opinion. It was often haunting, but the more he insisted on a poker face when saying the more I thought about it.
His claim is that all politicians are liars, and due to the gravity of their lies (in affecting the masses), their crimes have far reaching consequences and hence they should all go directly to jail after they serve for the rest of their lives.
I used to say, 'but we would have no politicians then', to which he said 'good'.
Funny though, he didn't seem to mind the man-behind-the-curtains, in the sense of the CEO of a locally publicly traded international business... who, he never voted for, nor even could identify by name or photo, having probably done more to influence his life than any politician has. For, the politicians he blames, were told what to do by Big Business.
It's only in light of this perspective that I would agree with my boss. Not on grounds of them lying, but more on the grounds they are supposed to serve the people, and not the companies. Since their fibs are a result of Big Business, and they choose Corporate spoils over the People.
I agree with my boss. They all should go directly to jail for not protecting the People.
France vs. EU (Score:5, Insightful)
So is this France's rejection of EU sovereignty in these matters?
And if so, will consequences might France experience for rejecting an EU ruling?
Re:France vs. EU (Score:5, Insightful)
The consequences will be simple, and depends on how fast the Telecom pack legislation passes in Europe
1) The Conseil Constitutionnel gets mandated to have a look at the law, and the Telecom pack is already there. It will throw the HADOEPI law back to the parliament as incompatible with the EU legislation, and hence invalid. And it's all much ado about nothing.
2) The telecom pack gets delayed, and the law proceeds without major challenge (the selfsame Conseil might also invalidate the law as being incompatible with key elements of the french constitution itself, go to step 1). The telecom goes in force, and France gets X years to put his legislation back into conformance (i.e. geld the HADOEPI's extra-judicial powers) or face punitive damages.
3) The Telecom pack gets brute forced AGAINST the wishes of the european parliament, which will simply demonstrate to all europeans that EU isn't a democratic institution, and needs bigger reforms than the last treaty, and the french presidential lobby is happy, and can wield a big ban stick to cover their abnormal business model based on luxury-levels professional content duplication (in an era where anyone can duplicate any content for less than an euro cent, paying any service to create a copy of a content for you is an economic aberration)
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Re:France vs. EU (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such thing as "The EU Army". The EU is more like a council of countries and is nowhere near a central government. Yet.
It's too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Sarkozy was elected. Seems to be the worst thing to happen to France in a long time.
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Indeed, worse than World War II even.
Note the careful evasion of Godwin's Rule.
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Sad. (Score:5, Funny)
Being able to share your movies with people across a continent the same way you would in your living room is a feature.
Allowing people to share books with one another and learn from them is a feature.
Letting people remix content from artists and share it with the world is a feature.
Telling people they cannot speak, read, listen or watch because they're part of the future and not part of the past is a bug.
What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
How about a little context with my stuff that matters?
Suddenly the entire editorial staff burst out in a fit of riotous laughter.
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.
Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
It has only passed the lower chamber. Now it has to be approved by the Senate with the exact same wording. In case a coma is changed, the assembly will have to debate, edit and vote again the law. Then it will have the pass the check of the constitutional council which could take down large chunks of the law. In other words, the battle is not over yet and the relief could come from Europe. Wait, fight, and see.
it's a crime (Score:2)
3-strikes makes it a crime to break the law too many times.
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My point is that you're being punished twice. Once for the crime and again for doing it too many times.
In California it's simple, you go back to the first violent felony you committed when counting for your three strikes. After that you can just count violent or serious felonies to add up to 3. The bar for the third strike is very low, you could commit non-violent grand theft(over $500 in CA) for your last crime.
In my opinion California has a 2 to 2.5 strikes law.
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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 unev
Give them what they want (Score:2)
We've all seen the cases where the big media companies have been caught using people's copyrighted content without permission. There's the case just recently where Sarkozy's own party got caught at it. So, if they want three-strikes, give it to them. If you see one of their political parties using your content without permission, report them. If you find one of the big media companies there using your content without permission, report them. And demand, loudly and publicly, that the law they were so bound a
Re:Give them what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, unless you're part of the cartel of industry organizations which bought and paid for this "legislation" - your complaints will be ignored.
It's not the words on the paper that define the law.
It's the money that paid for them.
Guys, (Score:4, Funny)
Oh noes! What to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Defining legal authority (Score:2)
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
Bot nets (Score:5, Interesting)
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So what would happen if someone used a bot net to get half of France banned from the internet.
Freedom!
Go Dark! (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not a supporter of copyright infringement. I am, however, a passionate supporter of due process. If they will not abide by due process, disappear.
Start building your darknet, today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_(file_sharing) [wikipedia.org]
Don't use it for copyright infringement, that would be illegal. But use it to make everything you do on the Internet much harder to detect. If they are going to use our openness against us, we must stop being open.
It's a little hard to set up a darknet right now, but it will get better if we all work together. Now go forth and start the hard work of remaining free.
Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an easy solution to this.
Disconnect France from the internet until they stop this nonsense.
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No need, they're doing it to themselves.
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?
adding my 0.5 cences (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess this means French file sharers will be moving to anonymous p2p programs like FreeNet, GnuNet, etc and darknets. This is silly, bring it all out in the open, money can be made if the price is low and service good, for example allofmp3.com. No rubbish about the artists will be cheated, they are badly cheated in the existing system:
Trent Reznor : "One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything'
Lets make a new system and pay the artists the lion share and let them own their music. Where an artists work can be got from multiple competing vendors. The artists and their fans is the more important thing. These fat middle men need to go on a slimfast diet and get the hell out the way. As for TV, Mark Pesce told the world that in 2005 http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html [mindjack.com]. Movies the same, plus we are still going to go to the cinema.
There are many ways this could work, but the world has changed and law makers legal world offers a tiny fraction of what this new world has to offer. Are they just too old fashioned? Still struggling with email let alone file sharing and hooking up the TV with the computer...
Ha ha ha! (Score:3, Informative)
And funnily, as I said before [slashdot.org], the first one to actually lose his first strike, was Sarkozy himself: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE53R1V120090428 [reuters.com]
I also proposed how to make him take his medicine own the two other times too. ^^
And a brand new dual use for a botnet opens up.. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh great, some smartass with a botnet could get all of France banned from the internet..
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Insightful)
The french presidential majority, you mean. Don't mistake the french with their politicians, or we could all think you're clones of G.W. Bush :)
The major problem of the 3-strike law is that it's a read-guard action that does essentially nothing (at worst) and completely ignores economic forces (at best).
30 years ago, in 1979, if I wanted to get a permanent copy of some content - say, a novel -, I would have to purchase a bunch of paper, some inks, find the appropriate tools (thank god, Xerox already existed), spend a couple hours preparing stuff, and would end with my copy of the novel. At the same time, a professional content copier - which I would call, say, a printer - would purchase paper at a discount compared to me, inks the same, have the tools ready for use, spend 1/1000th of the time I did per copy. Requiring the services of a professional content duplicator to make my copy of some content made economical sense.
Today, making a copy of some content involves about a milliwatt or so of electricity, a tool I already have, and 5s of my index or middle finger to do copy/paste. Using a professional content duplicator to make a copy of some content is an economically non-viable proposition, no matter how you turn around things. You cannot justify charging 15$ to make a DVD copy of a movie when I can make the same copy, at the same quality level, for one cent. And when I purchase your DVD, from my point of view, I am paying somebody 15$ for making a copy for me. That's good, if your DVD is a luxury item. But for a common economy good? Not working.
The profession of content duplicator is dead. Or dying. Like any profession that is no longer economically justified, it will go, like the hordes of people who slaved at hand looms to make cloths when Mr. Jacquart came with his automatic looms. They yelled, they ranted, they ran into the streets (hmmm, how many popular showings of movie industry people have we seen in the streets so far?). And in the end, they went, for no one would pay triple or worse prices for the same product.
The entire content industry is running in circles because, for good or worse, they all have hitched their cart to the profession of content duplicator. We still need people to create content (we call them artists). We still need businesses to find "good" content creators from the masses and advertise this content (we call them editors). We still need businesses to take the raw content, polish it, make sure it's well done (we call them producers). We even need business to deliver that content to us (we used to call them retail chains). What we no longer need is content duplicators. However, the whole content industry has decided (well, evolved) around the content duplicator. Why else are artists paid by the copy, if not because they use the content duplicator as the driver of their revenue. Everyone else in the industry does. Steve Jobs knew it when he was asked if he favored Blu-ray or HD-DVD: he said it didn't matter, because the idea of making expensive copies of content was already dying.
With that profession dying, they need to find out new methods of doing those services, and get paid. One segment of the content industry has already found it: the distributors. The guys who are delivering the content to the consumers are already there; they're called ISPs, and they charge people for the delivery of content - any content - and they're happy. They don't care if the content is subcription-based TV, iTunes songs, web pages, or BitTorrent P2P streams. They have found out the new business model of content delivery, and they're ready for the 21st century. The rest of the content profession still hasn't figured out, or, in the case of the old delivery channels will be dead. As usual when business models change, most of the old business go titsup and new business appear instead - only rarely will an existing business figure out it needs changing, figure out how it will change, and do it.
And when they have figured out how to live without the content duplicators, then HADOPI will become like all those laws that require you to keep your riding crop in hand when crossing another vehicle: something that's completely irrelevant.
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While I agree with the overall sentiment, there's one serious caveat in your example here:
"You cannot justify charging 15$ to make a DVD copy of a movie when I can make the same copy, at the same quality level, for one cent. And when I purchase your DVD, from my point of view, I am paying somebody 15$ for making a copy for me. That's good, if your DVD is a luxury item. But for a common economy good? Not working."
What you are doing is copying the data, not the physical DVD. It's the physical DVD that costs t
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Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Insightful)
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We should just imprison the planet and be done with it.
What makes you think we haven't? How far can you go without a passport?
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So, to paraphrase a famous person who didn't say it, *6,121 km oughta be good enough for everybody* That about right?
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What makes you think we haven't? How far can you go without a passport?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=worcester,+uk&daddr=p%C3%A9cs&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=48.785735,9.39988&sspn=13.587171,28.300781&ie=UTF8&ll=49.21042,8.349609&spn=13.470776,28.300781&z=5 [google.com]
Big enough prison for me, thank you.
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:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Funny)
Australia?
Re:The French are in Full Retreat (Score:5, Interesting)
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Does that show historical values, like, say, WW2?
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah I'm glad I live in the US, where our government would NEVER sell us out to business interests!
At least they have better wine and cheese.
Re: (Score:2)
I was told that once they were required to pasteurize their cheeses, that the cheese selection in the EU was basically the same as what we get in the states.
Anyone with personal knowledge care to comment?
Re:Dispute resolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't RTFA.
Is there a dispute resolution mechanism if I happen to be a Frenchman who's been falsely accused three times (I'm not French, and I haven't been accused of filesharing, I'm just curious).
You could take it to the courts, but AFAIK there's no built-in tribunal for disputes. You might have trouble once you're there, since the law gives authority to cut your connection after three accusations by the industry, not three proven cases of infringement. If, for instance, you were to write publicly about the issue in a critical tone, the industry could say, "I don't like you" three times fast and you'd be disconnected with no clear means of recourse. They don't even have to tell you you've been accused - the warning notes are optional.
Re:Dispute resolution? (Score:4, Informative)
No. After your Highspeed connection has been terminated (without due process of law i.e. a jury trial), you're forced to go back to using the telephone lines for your internet (50 kbit/s dialup). Yay.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a dispute resolution mechanism if I happen to be a Frenchman who's been falsely accused three times (I'm not French, and I haven't been accused of filesharing, I'm just curious).
But have you ever been accused of being French?
If someone accuses you of being French three times, you get to pass unfair laws that no one wants.