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Internet Pirates In France To Lose Broadband
slyjackhammer writes "France is purporting to take a hard line on copyrighted media (movies and music). According to timesonline.co.uk, a new measure approved yesterday by the French Cabinet would kill the Internet connection to those caught downloading illegally. 'There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone," President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the "three-strikes-and-you're-out" scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts. Under a cross-industry agreement, internet service providers (ISPs) must cut off access for up to a year for third-time offenders.' Google and video site Dailymotion have refused to sign up as consenting participants, and the state data protection agency, consumer and civil liberties groups and the European Parliament are all kicking against the goad as well. France may be pioneer in this kind of legislation, but they sure have their work cut out for them."
At least they're debating it in parliament. In the UK Virgin Media's behind-closed-doors deal with the media industry has already been covered here.
Note to self - I need to switch away from an ISP that is itself a content provider with vested interests in censoring my internet connection. Soon.
Isn't that like in the Middle Ages?
Arrrrrrrrrrgh!
It's not necessarily a bad idea, if we had a copyright system for the people by the people. Instead it's just the media mafia and false positives ensuring this is going to be a grand ol' cluster fuck.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
they just want their law to be respected, not your money.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
At risk of being modded down with a baseball bat, this sounds fair.
Three warnings should be more than enough. If you are unaware of the infringing use when you get your first warning, you should try to find out who's doing it. If you don't bother, then well that's your own fault.
It's a whole lot better then being sued for thousands of dollars, at least you get a chance to find out what's happening, or if you are the downloader, to stop with no consequences.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Download movies at work. Report your worksite. Rinse and repeat three times.
/. reader in France) and bingo, law will either be thrown out or the economy will collapse.
Do it on a country wide scale (say every
I ate your fish.
Jerry Lewis must be smiling from ear to ear...
Task Mangler
But it will be funny when we see an ISP deliver a disconnection notice to a homeless person. "I'm sorry sir, we are going to have to disconnect your dumpster from the interwebs because you apparently downloaded Britney Spears last album"
Recording Industry: *Knock* *Knock* Open up it's the RIAA!
France: Don't shoot! We surrender!
Recording Industry: Ummm. We're just some lawyers. We don't have guns.
France: That's okay. We surrender. We're comfortable with that. You can have anything you want. Just ask.
Recording Industry: Well...
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Same thing that happens every time some liberal idea raises its head in France. Crypto-fascists come along, pass it off propaganda-style, and then proceed to make things even worse for the peasants. It's a pattern dating back to the beginning of the Capetian dynasty, check your French history.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
Also, you know the reason someone like Google won't sign up to be willing participants is because it's signing away their common carrier status. That will have HUGE legal repercussions in the United States. They will be suddenly responsible for even the most minor violation and susceptible to law suit. No company in their right mind would do that. It's not going to be out of the kindness of their hearts. If they could help nail people who are violating copyright without carrying any legal responsibility at all, I'm sure they would.
I'm not seeing a problem with this. You don't have a right to "share" material that is copyrighted by someone other than you if they didn't give you consent. You may not like this, you can come up with all the (possibly valid) reasons things should not be that way. It's not for YOU to decide. The only real problem is how something like this is enforced. I'm willing to bet it will be done with a false positive rate that won't go over well with the French people, who from this side of the pond seem the kind of people who don't put up with their government doing stupid things (I seriously commend them for their idea of how to go on strike).
Burn Hollywood Burn
Better still, tie it in to the mechanism used in the current rounds of SQL injection attacks.
Idiots. All they'll end up with is a DDOS attack on their legal system...
Andy
Possibly the same thing that happened to UTF-8 encoder of your web browser?
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
do it once and be fired for breaching the IT usage policy that you signed while joining the company.
beside, it's not as if a governemental agency is blocking uniterally your internet access.
I suppose that in that case, your company is considered as an ISP.
Lets start a 3 strikes system for theifs. We can then cut off their hands when they commit the 3rd offence.
Sure, hands are fundemental a humans quality of life. The internet is heading towards that, and growing year by year.
Its nice to see we are going back to the days where it make sense to cut off someones hands for stealing some bread, hear hear!
If the people who didnt push these laws through didnt have money, means and power I would most likely support them. You could probably check their home computer 3 times in a year and 3 times they would be breaking some law, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour then.
The punishment doesn't fit the "crime". To the "knowledge worker" Europe wants to base it's future on, losing broadband is the digital equivalent of house arrest. Without access to radio, television, books and newspapers.
I like the three strike approach though. Should be applied to politicians. Sell out your voters to special interest groups three times and your out. Would really cleans out the European Commission and the European Council.
What is not said in TFA.
The three step mentionned are optionnal. You can be banned from internet at the first time.
And the decision is not up to judges, as we can think, but to a new and "independent" (read leaded by the majors) entity. So very little to no possibility to contest the punition, since it's not french court that rule over it. Meh...
Moreover, the law try to push forward filtering of content, in order to detect "illegal" file sharing. That could prove useful to control population, in the future, isn't it ?
And if the media would accept to talk about it, maybe people could try and fight against this project, but you hardly hear a word about it out of computer oriented websites.
We're in for a wild time...
The issue is standards of proof. To be caught doing something illegal on the net three times may seem to justify disconnection. However, simply to be accused of it cannot. The fundamental problem here is economic. The rights owners cannot justify prosecution, because that demands a standard of proof of misconduct which is very expensive. You have to get the evidence, display it, allow it to be subject it to public questioning. Witnesses have to testify to how it was obtained.
This is an attempt to bypass all that. It is far cheaper to simply disconnect on three accusations. However, the problem is going to be EC human rights legislation and the first suit for false accusation. Human rights legislation is going to be a problem because the EC Charter explicitly guarantees access to information. You are only going to be able to ban someone from Internet access with the same sort of evidentiary justification that you would need to ban them from a public library or from reading the newspapers. The first suit for false denial of access to information is, for the same reason, going to be explosive. The ISPs will be acting as a cartel, so where one, acting alone, could throw anyone off for any reason, all acting together are in effect conspiring to deny the person access to information.
One supermarket may ban someone from shopping. If all start to subscribe to a common list, there's a human rights issue.
In the end this is not going to work because you cannot get around the requirement for high standards of proof before depriving people of what the EC, with a different hat on, has defined as their fundamental human rights. Hoist with their own petard, as they say in Brussels!
The trend nowadays in France is to complain about purchase power.
But the goverment is unwilling to lower taxes and the reccord industry is unwilling to lower their profits margin.
for instance a NIN CD sells 8 UKP (10EUR) the same CD sells 22EUR in France.
go figure why people are pirating
Sofar people didn't have any big preasure to do so. I know, there are a lot of lazy people around, who just think: I don't care what happens to my computer. But I know enough people who do download and who wouldn't want to miss it.
So, how long does it take untill people run their download software in a virtual machine, completely seperated from the rest of the operating system, on a hiden true crypt partition and store the music/movies in the same way. And communication only over encrypted channels. Of course it has performance issues, but the computers are fast enough (and get faster).
And then let them cut of the internet? I would always defend myself and claim: false positive! And go public of course!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If it is the law, they will automagicaly become either consenting participants or not do any business in France.
I just hope that this does not mean that the local **AA can decide who they want to report, but still go through the legal hassle.
That way they need to file three lawsuits, where the people can easily say 'sorry' or not even show up. That way the local **AA must put its money where its mouth is. If they think it is worth it, they will. I bet they won't bother.
Otherwise it would be several million lawsuits and then the legal system will put them on a big pile and let it rot, so they can be busy with things that ARE important.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Dumb Internet Pirates In France To Lose Broadband
Internet Pirates In France With The Slightest Bit of Technical Acumen To Carry On As Usual
there, fixed that for you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And they had no revolutions in the last 40 years... something has to be done there.
Dear media outlets: Please accept the fact that you are fighting a war that you cannot win. Even with custom-tailored laws at your will the internet won't change and piracy won't go away at large. It is also still doubtful that it is piracy what is causing your alledged losses and not a general loss of quality in and appreciation of music. For the latter part it's even you who is to blame: Music is nowadays everywhere - with your permission. Bad versions of your "hits" are sold as overly annoying cell phone ringtones - with your permission and appraisal.
Some parts of the media business already have learned that both giving away for free and piracy is actually increasing business, not hurting it. Eric Flint, a sci-fi writer has pointed this out: http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos8 and http://baens-universe.com/articles/The_Economics_of_Writing Instead of treating your customers like shit, making a witch-hunt and introducing bull shit like DRM which only scares away your loyal customers towards piracy - pirated versions don't have silly limitations - you should finally realize that you need to do what every business in trouble need to do: Adapt. Or die. Whatever.
Sincerely
Reality
The process to come up with it was not. This law is based on a report by Denis Olivennes, CEO of the FNAC (largest brick & mortar music seller in France), in collaboration with the majors, but not with the consumer defense groups. The minister of culture talked with the majors several times, while the consumer defense groups were left waiting on the sidewalk, although they had a petition signed by several thousands citizen (and RMS' support ;)).
As a french citizen, I don't really disagree with the principle of this law, but to see our government act like the RIAA's lap dog is very unnerving. And the fact that the ministry of culture seems completely out of touch with today's technology annoys me even more (Not long ago this ministry published a tender for translation of their websites. They specifically asked for automated translation. Let's just say the translators union was not very pleased, and sent them a letter, along with an man-made english translation of it, and a french translation of the english letter made by google translate. The original letter and the google one had not much in common...)
France is purporting to take a hard line on streets. According to timesonline.co.uk, a new measure approved yesterday by the French Cabinet would take away the cars of those, caught speeding. 'There is no reason that the streets should be a lawless zone," President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the "three-strikes-and-you're-out" scheme that from next January will hit illegal drivers where it hurts. Under a cross-industry agreement, car-manufacturers must cut off access for up to a year for third-time offenders.'
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Do have a big throw-switch to kill the power? Have you got flashing red lights warning of intruders? I imagine a place like Hackman had in Enemy of the State.
Not hard... Make sure to plant the downloading software on machines that are not linked to you. (Coworker you don't like, a badly secured server, etc, etc..) Many places don't do MAC-address checks and connect any laptop to the network and they will access the whole network. A few Gumstix Linux machines that download Britney Spears continually to /dev/null, well hidden around the office under the raised floor.
It's easy, really...
Not that I would do such a thing, but you just have to think a bit out of the box.
As a member of April, the French free software association, I have been following this nonsense since it started. We have raised those issues already. W have been in touch with government officials, and this much is clear: they don't get it, because they don't care. The Sarkozy government is about as corrupt and authoritarian as the Bush administration, and similarly incompetent.
(Even Chirac, who didn't have the most spotless of records to say the least, had at least surrounded himself with competent and well meaning people.)
To illustrate this point, there's no better story than that of former member of parliament Cazenave. He was a member of Sarkozy's (and Chirac's) party, UMP, and one of free software's best advocate in the legislative branch. But before the last election, Sarkozy decided to give the party's nomination for that district instead to convicted felon Carignon. I shit you not. Carignon lost to the socialist candidate, in a district that had never voted left in decades.
Anyway, we have been in touch with members of several parliaments (assembly, senate, european), and have found strong allies. Former Prime Minister and current MEP Rocard for example was instrumental in defeating software patents in the European Parliament, and he voiced strong opposition to this current nonsense.
But we know how Sarkozy operates, he's learned from the worst, and, like Tom DeLay, he's going to strongarm his party's members in the legislative to toe the party line, even if they have reservations.
I'm still waiting for that new "three false positives and you are out for at least a year" policy.
But I'm afraid it won't be implemented before the year of desktop Linux and release of DN4Ever.
What you quote is what the government claims in its press briefings, not what's in the damn law. They lie through their teeth, on top of being completely incompetent.
Haha... you clearly don't work in France. Fired for misuse of the companies internet connection?
That's really not as easy as you seem to think. It's not even legal for the company to monitor your internet usage!
Such punishment may have made sense 10 years ago when the internet was a novelty / toy to most people. But today, many people rely on the internet for basic everyday needs, such as communication, employment, paying bills, filing taxes, etc.
Ron
Just more reasons to use your neigbours WiFi
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Silly cloricus. Large companies don't have to follow the same rules people do.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
The Daily Newspaper. Date: Two weeks from today. Today, France shut down all internet access and disbanded all remaining ISPs. "There simply weren't enough customers about to use them. I mean, there was a pair of grandparents over in Lyon that managed to keep their access for six days, but then the grandfather went to the wrong kind of site, and, well, you know what happens from there.", explained France's Prime Minister, "It just wasn't feasible to keep these companies alive when all they were fighting over was the last remaining customer, a blind monkey in the Paris Zoo." In related news, emigration rates have hit an all-time high, and Swedish is more popular than ever as a second language.
In soviet russia, the broadband loses the pirates!!
France, on the other hand is one of those countries that have a tax on blank media.
A suit had been mentioned on /. a couple of years ago were a French "pirate" was acquitted on the ground that the financial damage due to copying of the movies (for private use) was already paid by the tax on blank media.
Some consumer interests group should remind that to Mr. Napole-rkozy.
But don't be afraid : after all, manifesting in the streets is a national sport in France and the subject is bound to be brought up.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I especially like their "solution" for illegal downloading from work:
What do company employees risk?In the case of illegal downloading inside companies, an alternative measure to the ISP subscription cut will be proposed ; that is to say, the installation of digital protections like firewalls on employees workstations in order to block downloads. Although, public places where it's possible to connect to the Internet (public libraries...) will also be concerned and will have to put in place a protection system to prevent illegal downloading from their computers.
(quickly translated by me from http://www.zebulon.fr/actualites/2097-loi-antipiratage-mode-emploi.html)
1- Put nice sentences together and try to reinvent the wheel
2- Mess up the implementation because you understand nothing to IT
3- ???
4- Blame someoneelse (next government?) for the complete failure!!!
My
i don't think the ruling elite .. are really thinking this through to the end ..
without access to content and a high-speed INTERNET connection i will have very little use for any but the most basic of portables .. EeePc or the equivalent with WiFi .. although i will probable wait a will for a nice VIA nano or similarly equipped device 12-13 inch .. which will still give me INTERNET access .. all be it with slightly great degree of effort on my part .. and maybe the price of a coffee ..
and it will be the last $500-600 i spend on tech or internet access that the general economy will ever get from me .. and you think $150-$200 a barrel oil is going to hit the western tech based .. oil Dependant economies hard .. just add that in to the mix on an even moderate level and let's see how long they lasts ..
i pay just a little over a $1000 a year including TAX for my 6-10MB cable connection .. been doing that for about 10 years now .. and spend about $1000-2500 a year on computer hardware .. not including the 5 to 10 systems a year that i build for Friends and acquaintances .. that will all end .. i will quit .. go ahead and cut me off and see who suffers more .. me or the general economy .. for my part i will give up on computers and tech .. and go outside and get some fresh air .. and catch up on my reading etc.
yea go ahead hit me were it hurts !!
it would probably be the best thing that could happen .. the end of my unhealthy information and stimulus ADDICTION !!!
bring it on baby ..
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:16:3E:72:42:c2
New MAC address!
we need only one worm that starts "illegal" downloads on every PC and whole France as a country is offline? Where are the script kiddies when you need them?
You need to learn about your own stupidity by having PITA. That works best.
They could try the Australian approach. Have a whitelisted subset of the internet that anyone can access, which includes municipal services and trusted websites suitable for all ages and bound by licensing contracts, and require registration and age verification to access anything more. Of course, access would be a privilege, which could be suspended or revoked for a range of offenses (copyright violation, non-payment of fines, "anti-social behaviour", &c.)
Under this scenario, people would be questioned on their bandwidth usage, and with more political pressure from the media industry we'd start to see convictions based on the 'guilty until proven innocent' principle.
Indeed. This is not only valid in France but in all other civilized countries.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
France is a has-been.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/health.html
It's not here, but the british look after africa a helluvalot more than the french in their respective parts.
Thank God I left France and moved to Egypt for more freedom :D
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
Or rather it will just be selectively enforced and used to persecute people the authorities don't like, similar to what's happened with so many other laws.
Most likely it won't be enforced against record companies, movie studios, broadcasters, etc.
As it happens frequently after a political success, elected leaders seek ultimately to loose the next elections. Good job mr. sarko, and please criminalize the instructed and keep avoiding confrontation with france's real problems ...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HFPJZhdutxM
Next step will be a law like in UK where you have to give away the encryption keys or face jail.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
France sure knows how to maintain its café society. Or, should I say cybercafé society?
it is in the best interest of the government to have a working population at maximum productivity. If part of the population starts considering acceptable losing 7%- to 12% of brain volume because of pot this would be a major problem and the effects of drugs on productivity are already showing in the charts of USA against the rest of the world (Specially ASIA)
This is a scientific study that proves how bad is smoking pot:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/04/2264668.htm
Now deal with it, stop taking drugs and most important stop whining...
as a matter of fact I do work in France.
while not easy, you can certainly be fired over Internet misuse, especially if it involves installing dialers and such on a computer.
beside, monitoring is allowed as long as the personnel is informed and it is declared to the CNIL.
. . . on more important illegal online activities, like child porn? Do the ISP's in France also monitor those types of activities? It seems that would be on the top of the list with terrorism. I see piracy maybe in the top 20 and spam in the top 10.
Can I bum a sig?
it is in the best interest of the government to have a working population at maximum productivity.
If that were true, then alcohol - far more "productivity-damaging" drug than marijuana could ever hope to be - would be illegal.
Your premise fails.
TrueCrypt (as an example) has the possibility to hide encrypted data and provides plausible deniability. So those laws would run into void here...
Yeah right... keep smoking pot, then add frinking for added fun. Please forget what I wrote...
And don't forget to add denial of reality and delusion to the mix... http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070501/marijuana_psychotic_070501?s_name=&no_ads=
Free provides 28Mb/s ADSL2+ with free international VoIP, free basic TV over IP for 29 euro a month. No capping whatsoever, awesome network quality, they also are the first to provide IPv6 to all their customers, and they make record profits. That's because they invested heavily in infrastructure and logistics, developed their own hardware (both set top box and DSLAMs), and managed to take advantage of significant economies of scale.
There are millions of websites that stream or (temporarily or not) store content on your computer. While '3 strikes and you're out' sounds relatively fair, I have to ask - at what point is it still considered fair use? Because if it's not expressly defined, any website that has a copyright on its own images used on that website could get any of its visitors in trouble. Worse yet, visiting any MySpace profile with copyrighted music would mean downloading that music, and could possibly get you in trouble. Worst-case scenarios, yes, but things like that need to be addressed.
I think it is not illegal to cause bandwith usage and do silly things like transfering a lot of random data straight to /dev/null just for fun.
And if we get to the point that the principle "guilty until proven innocent" is applied ... that we have far worse problems.
Finally The French Government is doing something I agree with. More nations need to get onboard and stomp out piracy. They should also be redflagging people, and stick on their permanent record. And a database of pirates should be made so other ISP's can check who people are.
And I thought you could find idiots only on the forums.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
But seeing as it's impossible without massively intrusive physical surveillance of every person to actually connect a person to an IP address downloading pirated materials then they're not doing it the old fashioned way, nor are they necessarily finding and punishing people actually breaking the law.
What about someone hijacking another person's wi-fi, which lets face it on most consumer wireless routers has no security option that isn't breakable in about 5 minutes? What if warning letters/e-mails are similarly intercepted? Some innocent person is getting cut off whilst the perpetrator simply drives down the road to the next victim.
What about public access terminals? What about businesses?
The problems are NAT and the fact that anyone can sit down at any PC or connect to a free node on the network be it wireless or wired in the majority of places that don't have and can't afford the security measures to prevent such things.
The fact is without catching people red handed then they can't really catch the people who are actually guilty and there's the old fashioned police work you talk about - actually doing proper investigations to catch people, unfortunately however this aint what's happening and as such your suggestion that what they plan for is old fashioned police work is simply false. What they're in fact doing is as with all these plans, the copyright holder monitors torrent swarms and the likes, submits IPs to the relevant ISPs and the ISPs do their three strikes. There's no burden of proof that the copyright holders really did catch people in the process other than text and image based logs, both of which are easily faked and doctored and then there's no evidence whatsoever that the person who gets kicked off is the person that's guilty.
Connecting the virtual/real world isn't simple, but this is why legislation that takes such extreme measures also can't be rushed. They're trying to get these laws done and dusted in fairly short times but they're not following any kind of technical consultation process meaning these laws are different to many laws that are passed in that they're some of the first laws to do away with the burden of proof and are essentially deciding people are guilty based on evidence that would be entirely inadmissible as evidence for other crimes.
The problem isn't going after piracy itself, I think people understand, including many pirates themselves that what they're doing is wrong, but doing away with due process and simply being too lazy to find a proper way of handling the problem is even worse because many, many innocent people will be caught by this. Most likely more than for any other law ever set.
If this becomes law in the UK it's even worse as pensioners are having their food delivery services removed as a cost cutting measure and are being told to order online, internet access is becoming essential for homework and tax returns will shortly have to be filed online only. On one hand they're making the internet as essential as the telephone, running water and electricity whilst on the other they're suggesting it's something that doesn't matter and can be taken away at the say-so of some random person working for a record company without any real proof requirements.
If everyone do it at the same time, what are they gonna do? Fire the entire France and outsource to China?
I'm the last one to quote my own grandmother here, but the Internet is keeping people occupied so they don't wake up and realize what's going on in their own country. France may be in for a heap of trouble from those who can't access the Internet. Idle hands on the Internet do no work.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How about your teen kid?
Oh, that was 2 centuries ago... Nobody cares about freedom here anymore.
~A French AC
So why are people pirating when they can just buy it from Amazon.co.uk and have it shipped over for about 12 euros, thanks to the strong Euro? They'd still save money - all it requires is a little patience. I'm waiting for delivery of 2 CDs right now, which set me back a grand total of 25 euros, including shipping.
Possibly the same thing that happened to UTF-8 encoder of your web browser?
My God! Slashdot killed liberty!
No problem, truecrypt is here to let them look at my porn collection instead of my music collection.
What will really happen: your boss gets wind of you abusing the corporate network, fires your ass.
Honestly, the whining going on is amazing. How about not pirating movies and music?
It wasn't me! It was the Lexmark X500n!
The RIAA confirms it!
:x
My guess is that the ISPs will not be happy with this. If this kind of thing becomes widespread we'll just have to setup pirate networks over wireless.
Salut,
Jacques
First of all I'm french. What I'd like to know is how they're gonna send the warning if I "infringe" on someone copyright. See they say the ISP must send an email to the offender. OK but what about most people who use online mail services as their primary, or even only, email address. Lots of people don't use the address they're given by the ISP. The only email address my ISP have for me hasn't been read for year. It's like they send a letter to you secondary house. How am is people supposed to know, just one day they wake and teir connection is gone. Can this hold in court?
Since this seems not to be based on a law but on a nebulous "cross-industry agreement", wouldn't the ISP violate the contract by unilaterally cutting off your connection?
Unless there is more to it, I could imagine people who need the internet for their work suing for damages due to loss of business.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I download, if I like it, I buy new/used on Amazon, eBay or preferably the artist's own site, if I don't like it, straight in the recycle bin. If I think your good enough, have the right stance on issues I believe in, then you'll get my cash for CDs and especially merchandise, which usually goes straight into your pocket. Like others a few knock off downloads have yielded loads more music than I would have ever tried before, consequently I am spending more now than ever before, on making sure I have good copies that will last me years to come when my HD's finally go to the big breakers yard in the sky!
Does Troll rating means proof that most modders are High on drugs?
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..
I have another idea. Get caught jaywalking 3 times, house arrest: be barred from the public streets forever.
Three strikes, you're out!
This came as no surprise to me 'cause at my university residence here in the States already bans internet access to those who have broke the 'rules' 3 times. I just ask my friends around instead of downloadng these days. I get quite afraid of being sued by RIAA that i no longer use bittorrent software at school. I did buy DVDs when i was downloading from internet illegally. I just don't wanna pay $25 for the new release. I always check on the $5 & $7 movie section whenever i go by the Walmart. I own about 40 legit DVDs. In fact it doesn't stop me from copying my friends' media tho. I just don't see the point of not allowing one the access to internet tho. because it can't stop one from pirating. it just can't be done.
1. Visit a competing company 2. Acquire access to the internet 3. Download things illegal and don't get caught save evidence of illegal download though 4. Report company 5. Repeat step five 6. ??? 7. Profit
I'm suggesting that we *will* have far worse problems, and this aspect, deliberate or not, is an instance of the frog-boiling algorithm. Or to use another much-loved cliche now dimmed by the passage of time: thin end of the wedge...
Why this will never get passes as a law...
1. Who will monitor for users downloading illegal material? Power to the ISP? Government? 3rd party? or the Software/Music companies?
2. How will they be able to identify user with existing privacy laws?
3. Are they planning on making a centralized database to keep track of people who are not allowed internet access? Something to an extent of child molesters/predators database?
My old ISP (http://www.jkn.no/) are doing something similar.
They have scheduled portscanning of their customers.
If they find ANY listening ports they will throttle your speed to modem speed.
That is what made me switch ISP.
I need to log on to my box at home from work sometimes.
Closing all ports was not an option.
The actual issue is dealt with in my sibling posts... but I'm concerned about the terminology used. could we please stop referring to downloading as piracy? There is real piracy out there, that kills people, disrupts trade and ruins economies. The word inflation due to conflating these two phenomena in one word results in severe risk of trivialising the latter, whereas actually it is a matter of great concern and needs a lot more attention than it gets now.
European nations are already "top heavy" generationally, and are facing the prospects of severe decline.
The mass exodus of youth who don't appreciate being treated like this will most assuredly have a beneficial effect on their social services.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,"
Very true. That's why there should be due process, standards of evidence, an evaluation by an impartial third party, an ability to appeal, etc.
How in the heck are ISPs going to tell the difference between a legitimate download and an illegitimate one? Or between an *apparently* infringing act and one that constitutes "fair use" or one that was permitted by the copyright holder?
Sounds like A) a lot of detailed forensics and paperwork, or B) a lot of false positives. Pick one.
Just more reasons to secure my wifi :-)
Here in my neighborhood in Santa Ana, CA this isn't an option any more, there is not a single access point available that would not charge money for the pleasure of connecting. Only secure stuff and paid WiFi spots in reach of my laptop now.
...in bed
And my neighbor to use mine. Then we'll both be safe, right?
Oh, wait...
Try getting caught speeding over and over, and sooner or later your license will be suspended. It may take a few more than 3 tries depending on how serious your speeding offense is. Doing 100 MPH in a 25 MPH zone three times would probably do it.
there's a huge difference here. the COURTS do this after PROOF is tendered. You have the option of a JURY TRIAL, and to face your accusers in a fair forum.this is done BY CORPORATIONS ON MERE ACCUSATION.
disgusting, ALL OF YOU.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
At risk of being modded down with a baseball bat, this sounds fair.
Three warnings should be more than enough. If you are unaware of the infringing use when you get your first warning, you should try to find out who's doing it. If you don't bother, then well that's your own fault.
It's a whole lot better then being sued for thousands of dollars, at least you get a chance to find out what's happening, or if you are the downloader, to stop with no consequences.
This assumes the copyright law itself is fair, which it is NOT. it was bought and paid for through numerous backroom deals, underhanded backdoor treaties, and in the dark seedy recesses where the public was unaware.No it's not fair to be sued^H^H^Hextorted for thousands of dollars, it's also not fair to be cut off from a major infrastructure resource as important as electricity and roads on a mere corporate accusation and most importantly without judicial review.
This initiative is about as fair as poll taxes, jim crow laws, and guillotine massacres following the french revolution.
so I ask, how much does the MAFIAA pay you to post?
So if I read the summary correctly (of course, like a good /.er I didn't RTFA) then if you get busted under this law no more broadband? So that means dial-up is your only option? Isn't that curel and unusual punishment? :-)
Media cartel: We will sue you price of a supercar for every file you share!
Li'l guy: OH NOES MISTER PLEASE DON'T!!!!
Media cartel: We will give you three strikes before we suspend your internet connection
Li'l guy: OH THANKS YOU KIND MEDIA CARTEL! I THINK THAT IS FAIR!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Don't mess with your company's internet, you're heavily watched !
Damn users
watch law & order.
the "good investigators" get everything from people who would like nothing more than to shoot them for tresspassing by merely suggesting to the person that they'll have law enforcement take a magnifying glass to some other aspect of their life if they don't cooperate.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
ISPs checking for copyright violations is absolutely no different than you downloading any file on the internet and manually listening to that file to make sure it doesn't violate your own copyrights. Either force the ISP to pay a $0.99 fee (or whatever you choose to set as your market rate, your artistic family photos can be set at $1,000) for copying everyone one of your emails, IMs, message board posts, uploaded family pictures and videos, or sue them for maximum copyright infringement statutory damages. It becomes a fight crime by committing crime infinite loop.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Firing someone in France is a long process and requires approval of the employee council (I forget the proper name) and the government. My company had an employee who downloaded porn using the work connection and catalogued it on the intranet (i.e. made it available to other employees). I'm talking a lot of porn - on the order 10,000 files...
We tried to fire the employee but in our case the government felt that it was not sufficient cause.
So - I should take back the comment 'as you seem to think'. As you say you work here and you would know the situation better than I do. However compared to the situation in the US and Australia etc it is *far* harder to fire someone in France. (At least from what I've seen).
Aren't you supposed to know what free software means? Seriously? I use RHEL Advanced Platform at work, and at over $1200+ per server per year, it's nowhere near gratis, it's however free as in freedom.
And Blender is a 3D modelling app, not a bitmap image manipulation app like Photoshop.
Cut 'em off.
The ISPs will lose revenue. The Government will step in to save them from bankruptcy. The "network effect" will be lessened. The "pirates" will find another method. Big advances in encrypted onion ring routing, and multi-site partial anonymous storage. Drop in "owned" systems, as less experienced users are simply cut off
Losers: ISPs and less experienced users. Government and other "snoops"
Winners: Other users due to decrease in SPAM. Peer to Peer forced evolution. Forced evolution in privacy preserving networks.
Neutral: "pirates"
To quote Nike: "Just Do It!". Stop threatening, and let's get this ball into play.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
IMHO the history of law in France is marked by irrational political maneuvers followed by revolution or riots. France is a nation of great technology and I hope all tech-minded individuals stand up for free (ab)use of information and question the leaders responsible for the measure.
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise (IFPI, MPAA, RIAA lobbies), to put shackles upon sleeping men." --Voltaire
Problem solved.
Its none of anyone's business what im doing on-line anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm amazingly pissed off when I see stuff like this...
Not so much media companies buying laws but the fact that governments are able to address this somewhat questionable problem with such a "Final" solution and not stop the bullshit like botnets that are absolutely evil and destructive to all.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
On one hand we have legislation that would cut off internet to illegal users.
On the other hand we have technologies that lock down hardware that lack the necessary precautions in understanding fair use.
That sure seems like a lovely combination.
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Saying "you are a thief" just muddies the waters - stealing deprives the owner of the use of the object stolen, unlike copying. Unauthorized copying is still illegal, and perhaps it is bad, but that does not mean it is stealing. Calling it "theft" or "piracy" is an end-around way to say "Unauthorized copying is stealing, and we all agree that stealing is bad, therefore unauthorized copying is bad".
The "content providers" are not being honest in the way this discussion is framed. They massively exagerate the severity of the "offense", claiming astronomical lost revenues and asking for draconian penalties, as if the downloaders would otherwise have spent tens of thousands of dollars buying CDs.
Basically, the recording companies are lying in an attempt to get laws passed that will lock in their revenue stream. They are trying to protect a business model that was based selling vinyl records, which were expensive to produce (marginal costs, that is) and could not be copied very well by individuals. When digital recording and CDs came about, the costs of recording dropped precipitously, particularly the *marginal* cost involved in the production of each individual CD. Were these savings passed along to consumers? No - instead of charging $7.99 for an LP, they charged $16.99 for a CD. They really made out like bandits. Remember that CD burning was not yet feasible for individuals. So, as a result of technologic advance, they experienced a massive windfall. Do you think they complained about being able to produce copies of recordings virtually for free (after the first copy)? No, they basically were given the means to print money, and wanted it all to themselves.
Now, forward another decade or so, and all of a sudden it is very inexpensive for individuals to make their own copies. "Foul! Stealing! Piracy! We can't let those kids make copies for $0.25 apiece - we need to keep charging them $16.99 for the copies *we* make for $0.25 apiece! And by all means, we must not let the laws get updated to reflect advances in technology".
In a digital world, the idea of charging on a per-copy basis just has to go. It does not reflect reality, and industries that cling to it will go the way of the buggy whip. The tide is coming in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/19/piracy.france
This will certainly restrict dumb and lame users to access the P2P networks and flood them with crap.
I see it as good thing.. I wonder if every country did this, we could look for a release name on NFOrce and find it on the preferred P2P network just like the old times.
Today, every dumbass renames the release name and inject crap into it, they don't care keeping the correct hash. They don't have respect for anybody.
Take that French lame p2p suckers!!
BTW: French ppl: it's a good time to start selling pirate DVDs again :p
Hey, companies already have it tough in France. Let's not make it any more difficult for them.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I have been led to believe that, in many if not all EU countries, downloading music and movies from the Internet is legal. It counts as making a copy for personal use, and, as you mention, you pay a levy on blank media, which is used to compensate the rights holders.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Easy there. You wouldn't wanna imply the US is not civilized, now would you?
Well, I WAS going to move to France for the great health care, people and food. But now that I can't share media, screw that country.
At my university, the letters asking network operators to take appropriate action (sent by you know who) mention that users X and Y were caught "uploading" or "sharing" W and Z illegal files. IANAL, but p2p downloading by e.g. bittorrent (which is equivalent to uploading) should in principle be more punishable than downloading. From what I read, in many countries this distinction is made crystal clear, and downloaders are not easily prosecuted.
France's movement to punish downloaders is very far fetched, implying that for them "downloading" and sharing is the same thing.
This beggars the question: They will cut off peoples' internet connection and at the same time leave uploaders free to do whatever they like?
And what about non-2p2 forms of download like e.g. Rapidshare? Will they hunt RS account holders too? My bet is that they will leave the RS business to flourish, since it brings tax money, makes Paypal rich and promotes the knowledge society, but nevertheless they will mercilessly hunt down the poor grandfathers and granddaughters using it because someone has to pay the blame.
Another issue that springs to my mind is whether there will be established some sort of 'black list': if a convicted user has been cut off, then all the ISPs of the country should be aware of the fact and not allow him to buy a new connection before the ban period has expired. Will such a list be expanded to other kinds of service providers or even linked to the country's penal system? Will the person convicted have a widely accessible and permanent 'criminal' record, banning him from e.g. using his cell phone to access the internet?
The times are a-changing. Some (even /.ers) claim that the Internet is free and cannot change. My feeling is that fear will change us (historically it has been the main driving force of any society) and we will change the internet in turn. Personally, I got scared shitless when my network outlet was cut two times, and when I desperately need a torrent, download it only using BitThief.
So how long until people reading anti-government blogs and running websites deemed unpatriotic lose their access as well. This is a precedent that MUST be prevented!!
So L'American thinks the Internet will be lawful if he gives the MAFIAA the ability to kick people off. Brilliant.
Wrong. The company only have to notify its employees that they are monitored (including email) and then it's perfectly legal !
Don't steal copyrighted works off the Internet.
Sneaker net anyone.
I was thinking just that :)
Optimists are never pleasantly surprised ;)
That argument didn't pass in Croatia. And during the last two years, everyone seems to have forgotten about the "tax" (which is not even state-managed, instead it's industry managed). Oh yes, another thing. TVs with internal storage memory are also taxed in Croatia. I'm not sure if they gave up on it, but that was their initial intention. Down with the capitalism :)