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France Seeks To Push 3-Strikes Law Across Europe
quanticle writes "As you may recall, France previously threatened to cut off broadband access for file sharers. However, after lobbying by the public, the legislation failed in the National Assembly. Now, the government of Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to revive the the measure by pushing it as an amendment to the pan-European Telecoms Package. This amendment has the potential to impose 3-strikes across Europe, not just in France."
If you would hate just Sarkozy, it should be quite enough. Most French don't like him either (and no, not just because of filesharing).
There are two kinds of democracies. Representative and direct. They go under the same name, but they are very different. Unfortunately, we are stick with the first type. People need to realize there is a difference between those types, and not rely on honesty of politicians.
There is an excellent book about direct democracy: http://www.democracy-international.org/book-direct-democracy.html
In France, the money for presidential campaigns comes from taxes, is limited, and of the same amount for every candidate. But if you got less than 5% of votes, you have to give back this money to the government (this can be painful).
Oh, and I forgot to say that they all have the right to the same amount of time on TV. And all of this is controlled and enforced.
(Well, that is in theory.)
The french law project which establishes an independant authority with power to ban users from the Internet (by cutting the Internet access) after three strikes has not failed to pass in the National Assembly : IT STILL HASN'T BEEN EXAMINED THERE !
It is scheduled to be examined soon by the Senate first and then eventually by the National Assembly. You can read it there in french : http://www.senat.fr/leg/pjl07-405.html
What is true is that right now the French ISP association (including every french ISP), the web services association (including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and such), the commission in charge of regulating telecommunications, the commission in charge of the defense of privacy and several others have all said they were against this law.
Besides, even though I can imagine Nicolas Sarkozy being pleased if there were european legislation copying his ideas, I don't see any particular lobbying from his part in the European Parliament. Just look at the amendments and who wrote them (in the IMCO, ITRE or LIBE committee).
http://www.laquadrature.net/files/amendements-compromis_ITRE-IMCO_7juil/
And I'm not even speaking of the usual fierce independance of MEP toward national governments. They're much nicer with regular lobbying groups, in this case the music and movie industries.
Aye but well, even though they might seem to have most power in EU, in reality most of Europe doesn't get much worried when they try to push through some idiotic rulings like that. The french and the italians are doing that constantly and it is not often they get something actually through.
Fine print: I work in internet advertising.
This rule would still have to be approved by the European Parliament for it to become law. If you're an EU citizen, do like the FA says and write your MEP:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members.do?language=EN
drill down the map until you get to the member page; there are three postal addresses at the bottom of page. I'd either write to them in Brussels or their constituency address, since they're only usually in Strasbourg once a month. There's an email contact too, at the top.
On a side note, I've actually been in the mailroom at the EP building in Brussels, and it's really nice. It's in a prominent position right on one of the main corridors between the offices and the hemicycle.
Hate to break it to you, but Berlusconi is still there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Kind of ironic to say that on the day that France won the USA's independance.
The Swiss are a nice example of direct democracy (partially at least).
They can do it since they are a relatively small country and have the necessary 'culture'