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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."
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
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
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.
US citizens and companies are bound to US law when outside the country. When you agree to willingly give up your common carrier status in France, that can be used in court in the States to demonstrate you are no longer a common carrier. They may or may not win, something like that hasn't been brought up yet, but it's a foreseeable problem that is easily avoided. It is for that reason that no company that does business in the States would ever sign up for something like this, because to do otherwise just invites trouble.
Burn Hollywood Burn
why not just register a new internet account with your wife's name, then with your kids name.... by then the year suspension should be over on your first account, rinse and repeat
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
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!
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.
I'm wondering whether the courts are involved in this, and whether a conviction is necessary for disconnection.
It's fair enough to say that internet connectivity can be revoked for offenders, just as a driving licence can be revoked. But revoking a driving licence always involved a conviction in court, to my knowledge.
That's aside from the problems with making this law workable - burden of proof, enforcing, etc.
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 ]
As a frenchman I'd like to reply to that... we already have an independent entity that is overlooking computer use (it was set in place in the 70s with the "informatique et libertes" law). I haven't ever heard anybody say that it was "sold" to any interest (be it government or to any industry, for that matter). the only problem is the amount of money they get to do what they have to do.
I won't answer to the plot theory, because if you just look at french history, you will see that we're not that easy to control...
as for media coverage, it made the evening news on every major channel.
best regards.
Indeed. This is not only valid in France but in all other civilized countries.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
this law is pretty even handed. 3 strikes and you lose internet access for UP TO a year, so you know it's going to be less.
What mechanism protects you against false, let alone malicious, accusations.
this is much better than being sued and having the RIAA france eating up court time filing john doe suits.
They are limited in how many such suits they can file, if they abuse this they can be indefinitly barred from using the courts. Also if you are sued you can always counter sue.
This whole "3 strikes thing" appears to involve claims which wouldn't pass the standards of any civil court. The French appear to have set up something equivalent to a "kangaroo court"...
If you use a knife to murder someone, it will be confiscated for evidence. That's even if it was your wife's favourite kitchen knife.
I'm not saying I agree with the law, but why do people have to go so over the top in their discussion of it (and why do people think nonsense like this is insightful)?
I don't know how contradictions are dealt with. Obviously, people aren't arrested after their vacation to Amsterdam. I do know that if you are a US citizen and you smuggle cocaine from France to Germany you can and will be tried in a US court if the US authorities arrest you on American soil. If you are a US company and you violate US law on foreign soil, you can be punished by the US government. US even goes further and holds foreign nations to US laws when they are responsible for breaking them across borders. Pay someone to smuggle drugs into the States, but never step on US soil, you can be tried in the States.
I'd like to remind you that Manual Noriega is sitting in a US prison right now.
Burn Hollywood Burn
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.
Just a hypothesis....
P.S. I'm no Sarko fan but the guy isn't stupid.
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?
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.
>Situational ethics and moral relativism are the height of craven hypocrisy.
And moral absolutism is the height of arrogant oversimplification. When you make broad, sweeping uninsightful philosophical comments you completely undermine your point.
The ISP will be "reading" every click you do, every file you access, every post you make. How many people would install home alarm systems that let let the alarm company peer into every room in your house to make sure only "safe" activity was occurring?
Nobody knows what lies on the other side of any hyperlink before they visit that link. For anything to be seen or heard on the internet, the information must by definition be copied from point A to point B. We don't drive little minis with Alice in Wonderland through the "intertubes" to visit the Amazon mall store. Listening to 30 second song samples on Amazon isn't going to look any different than downloading 30 second song samples from anywhere else. Listen to 100 30-second song samples, and you've equivalently downloaded 50 minutes of music. Listening to some guys free garage band album isn't going to look any different than downloading some music industry union album.
The government and content industry are living in pure fantasy enforcement land. The internet is just itching to pounce on "mistakes". And the citizens are going to demand that ISPs and Media Enforcement Watchdogs be subject to the same criminal and civil penalties. For the deterrent effect to be even remotely feasible, those groups are going to literally be risking their entire businesses.
They will either break a secure internet, killing any reason for people to trust legitimate on-line commerce is safe (people will stop ordering stuff), or a stronger more encrypted secure internet will evolve.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
...I rather suspect that an ISP looking at your traffic logs might ponder how normal usage means you upload and download so many more gigabytes a month then an average user.This is one of the things that amuses me so much about the American P2P scene... ISPs whine about users actually using the huge amount of bandwidth they are sold, and claim that the piratical torrents are the main issue... so the pirates (and even joe user) begin using even *more* bandwidth, as they encrypt their streams to prevent packet inspection... so the ISPs are causing the latest bandwidth surges by their own actions.
And on another note, who are you to be placing moral judgements on my use of your service? ?As long as I don't violate the ToS, how am I "in the wrong" for saturating my pipe 24/7? If this keeps up, I'm likely to start a loop data transmission for no other reason than to fill my pipe as much as I can. I'm paying for this amount of bandwidth, don't whine when I have the nerve to actually use it.
It sounds extremely clear-cut to me, but none of the "powers that be" seem to have the idea yet. Digital copyright is dead. The technology is ubiquitous, and digital works cannot be protected. The media industry saw this day coming way back when we had VHS and blank audio cassettes. They've been kicking and screaming for several decades about it. Time to put it to rest; now that at least 50% of the households can copy any digital media at will, the media whores should either find a new way to make money in this digital age, or roll over and die.
I'm sick of all this dramatic finger-pointing and hand-waving.