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.'"

Comments

Re:Dumb. As in, large steaming pile of ...

[darthflo]

Do French right wingers have some special advantage, like negative IQs?

Nope, that privilege is reserved for American Republicans.

Re:answer to your flamebait:

[quanticle]

How's china? Ask the thousands of guys sentenced to death (well suppose that they can't speak anymore). So go on and ask the rural population or the dalai lama...

China is no more Communist than post-Soviet Russia, Saddam's Iraq, Pinochet's Chile or any other brutal non-communist dictatorship. They stopped being communist when Deng Xiaoping came into power and proclaimed, "Black cat, white cat, who cares so long as it catches mice." You may as well ask the people that Saddam gassed, or Pinochet "disappeared".

That's the commonist way, so stop bullshitting people

That's the dictatorial way. All dictatorships jail and kill political enemies, no matter whether they are communist, capitalist, or fascist. Communism, specifically, is an economic system characterized by strong central planning and a nearly complete lack of private property. China (modern China, at any rate) is nothing like that. The government acknowledges private property, and encourages production by private industry, rather than government.