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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."
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
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.
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 ]
Indeed. This is not only valid in France but in all other civilized countries.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/