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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!
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.
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
Well if you RTFA you'll see that they are trying to get it right:
Seems like a fair deal to me. Instead of pro-actively punishing everybody on the assumption that they're going to steal, only actually punish the ones that do.
The points about coffee shop wireless etc are all valid - presumably either the law won't apply to communal wireless (gaping loophole) or cafes/airports/etc will simply bite the IPv4 bullet and buy more addresses so they can associate a C&D notice with an actual (cc verified) customer.
Anyway. I think Sarkozy is talking sense here. Do law enforcement the old fashioned way - by finding and punishing the people actually breaking the law.
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.
If you download Britney Spears ... you are already punished enough by what you get! No need to disconnect here...
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.
They should have a zero tolerance policy for downloading Britney Spears....one strike and your out.
After all it is for your own good. If your downloading Britney spears than you just don't deserve to have the privilege of using a internet connection.
Now that would be an anti net neutrality law I could stand behind!
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
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.
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?"
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 ]
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.
Indeed. This is not only valid in France but in all other civilized countries.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Hey! Why does the word "guillotine" jump into my head?
Its funny I work for a french company and the Sales and Marketing department keeps sending emails around saying they have lost their guillotine. Personally I am happier for the S&M dept not to have a guillotine.http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:16:3E:72:42:c2
New MAC address!
I just change my IP address randomly from 192.168.1.2 all the way to 192.169.1.255 every day. They'll never find me ! Hahahaha !Um, wait...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
That's a fairly gross assumption on your behalf.
France, being french speaking, have their own unique music market, in addition to international markets.
In support of that, 90% of top-10 selling artists are french [SNEP/IFPI, 2001]
I am splitting hairs though - the leading ISP here, Free.fr has a live music streaming service already - http://www.deezer.com - No cost, no restrictions. That's a pretty decent sweetner already.
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.
It wasn't me! It was the Lexmark X500n!
The RIAA confirms it!
:x
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.
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!!
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.