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Illegal Downloaders to be Blocked By French Government?
rdavison writes "According to a recent article on the Financial Times site, 'internet users in France who download music and films without paying for them could find their web access shut down by a government body.' The proposal originated with FNAC, an entertainment retailer. According to the article, the proposal has a good chance of being accepted. 'In exchange for the clampdown on illegal downloading, the music industry has agreed to make individual downloads of archive French material available on all types of players by dropping digital rights management protection. The French film industry has agreed to release DVDs more quickly after a film's first cinema screening, reducing the delay from 7½ months to 6 months. However, consumer groups and even some of Mr Sarkozy's own members of parliament on Thursday attacked the proposal for a new internet policeman as a threat to civil liberties.'"
Isn't most illegal file transfer done by BitTorrent?
As far as I know, yes. However, the donkey clones seem to be pretty popular. Of course, you will always have people who do it the old fashion way and put up FTP sites or trade vie IRC.
My question is, how do they know which traffic is illegal. I download my Linux distro's via BitTorrent.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Isnt france the weird country where they kinda decided to define cryptography = weapons
Both France and the USA did that, much to the amusement of the rest of the world, who of course could use crypto anyway (the sheer arrogance of the USA in particular in assuming that if they prevented export of crypto from the USA no-one else would develop it is astonishing). So the net effect was to hurt the USA and France.
Nope, that's just plain wrong. In very few cases actual DVDRips are available before the official first screen date. I believe Michael Moore's Sicko was the last bigger production where this actually happened.
It's quite common to see DVD Screeners and (a bit later) R5s pop up rather quickly after the first U.S. screening date, Cam, TeleSyncs and (increasingly seldom, probably due to the rise of R5) TeleCines tend to be available right (as in "double-digit amounts of hours") after press/exclusive screenings and before official releases.
Ok, here is the scoop...
1) Music and media will be DRM free....
2) DVD's will come 6 months after the cinema...
Sorry, but I fail to see the problems... Actually I wish they had more of that elsewhere because then I could buy music without fear of it not playing on a certain device.
Oh wait I know what the problem is, you can't rip off anymore because P2P will be watched. And that means you MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAY for something...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Perhaps you have some idea of how they plan to discriminate between illegal and other large downloads? Are they going to try to Carnivore and analyse everything? Or just assume big download = pirate and cut you off?
Which is why I like the local, privately-owned (as opposed to just being one more acquired outlet of Cineplex Odeon or some other corporate film giant) theatre the small town I live in. It's been running continuously for over 90 years, having started life as a stage theatre and converting to a movie theatre later on. One screen, an actual projectionist in the booth running 35mm film through the projector, reasonably priced concession, and a theatre staff that doesn't care if you bring your own food in or not.
But probably the best feature of the theatre is the total lack of anti-piracy propaganda. I didn't even think that this was a big issue until I went to see a movie in the city. Posters plastered over the walls from the MPAA's you-can-click-but-you-can't-hide campaign (which is odd, considering the MPAA has no power in Canada) and a surly staff that patrolled the interior of the "theatre" threatening to have anyone with a camcorder held and arrested. Next time I go there, I'm bringing a few friends and Pirate Bay posters and taping them over the MPAA signs while the staff isn't looking.
While I left the country a long time ago, I'm originally from France, so I browsed through the actual report (which you can find here - in frog of course).
;-)
First it is worth noting that there was no representative of the entertainment industry in the commission, hence the lack of inquisition-style measures.
It's fairly obvious that the commission chairman (CEO of a music retailer) put in whatever was good for him:
- lower taxes on "cultural goods" (how do I lower my prices without cutting into my margins, lessee...)
- more DRM free music (how do I prop up my online music store when Apple won't let me sell DRM'd stuff that'll work on iPods)
- reduce lag for DVD releases.
What I found most interesting is that they actually went through the whole range of possible technological measures looking for the least bad. URL/IP blocking, protocol blocking, fingerprinting, watermarking, you name it. And, believe it or not, they actually rejected most of these for the reasons you mention and others: not all P2P traffic is illegal, URL can change easily and so on. They're looking for a way for right holders to specify what exactly can't be downloaded, a watermarking of some kind. They even acknowledged problems with IP identification: WiFi of course, but also company networks and IP spoofing (which you missed
Although I don't really care, for the obvious reason, I can't say I'm pleased with it (for one thing, how you can build the web as a cornerstone of life as a citizen and a consumer and then just cut it off?), but I have to say I was impressed. This is definitely a step in, well, not quite the right direction, but at least the right direction derivative (if you will). This thing is a far cry from the DMCA/EUCD "kill them all, god will recognise his own" approach.