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."

Comments

Re:so we can hate the french again?

[discord5]

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).

Oh trust me, the rest of Europe isn't too keen on him either

For fuck's sake

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

Why are politicians so retarded?

You are there to represent the people and your country. If you find yourself having to subvert the will of your public, your constitution, your own justice system etc., then take that as a big fucking clue that YOU ARE WRONG and the best way for you to help is to STFU.

Re:For fuck's sake

[Krneki]

They represent whoever pays for their election campaign, they don't give a damn about people as long as it doesn't affect their vote too much.

Re:For fuck's sake

[digitig]

And there is no way that lobbyists could get around this by lobbying the opinion formers (eg, the press) rather than by directly funding the political campaigns, is there?

The worst since Berlusconi

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarkozy is the worst leader in EU since Berlusconi.

Re:The worst since Berlusconi

[Hognoxious]

Do you know what since means? It cannot, in the temporal rather than the causal sense, refer to something that is ongoing. Got that?

the general impression in this thread is that there's a consideration that electors were stupid or misguided in voting for a certain leader.

What's wrong with that? Don't you think it's possible that (hindsight being 20-20) they made a bad choice - not necessarily in this case, but anywhere, ever? To avoid Godwin's law I won't mention the obvious example.

People are free to criticize governments, but NOT the electors that voted for them.

Well if you say so, it must be true. I could comment on the irony of someone who goes on about the will of the people in one sentence while issuing royal proclamations in the next, but I won't. Did I imagine those people saying the Americans were pretty dumb to elect Dubya not just once but twice?

Re:This and G8...

[mdwh2]

Although I think direct democracy would have its own problems too - we'd be under the will of the masses.

There are some things that referendums are appropriate for (issues that affect everyone), but just look at what happens when you put questions like "Should gay people be allowed to marry" to referendums as I believe has happened in some US states.

I'm not sure how things would work in this case - whilst few people would care about the record industry and most people happily copy CDs/tapes, filesharing is still something only done by a minority of people AFAIK, and most people probably don't see the Internet as some fundamental need, so I fear that a proposal to ban filesharers (especially with a bit of campaigning that associates "filesharing" with not only "stealing", but terrorism and p0rn) would still get passed in a referendum.

Here in the UK, our unelected second house is the only thing that can stop some of the authoritarian measures the Government is pushing through (similarly with the unelected Supreme Court in the US being the thing which protects the Constitution).

Re:so we can hate the french again?

[digitig]

The rest of Europe (indeed, the rest of the world) should have no say in the democratic election, but is free to have an opinion on the resulting democratically elected official. After all (checking carefully for Godwin), the fact of his initial democratic election did not prevent much of the rest of the world taking a view of Adolf Hitler, did it?

Shamed of being French right now

[fgaliegue]

Because I am.

Curiously, some French politicians are brilliant, but they're not part of the French government.

A French "European deputy" (for lack of a better name) has opposed this three-strike legislation, arguing (rightly so imho) that "an industry that is not able to make do with new consumer habits [the Internet]" shouldn't impose its rules to the government. The French government hasn't listened.

Michel Rocard is famous for opposing software patents. The French government hasn't listened.

French automobile club leaders, the least of which is not the president of the ACO (Automobile Club de l'Ouest, supervising the 24 hours of Le Mans) said that the pollution tax is a mistake, because one already exists and that's the TIPP (Taxe Intérieure sur les Produits Pétroliers, Internal Tax on Petrol-derived Goods, for lack of a batter name) that one pays for each centilitre of gasoline/Diesel in the tank, and that there's no reason than a guy driving only 3000 miles a year in his Ferrari should pay more than one driving ten times that in his Diesel Renault Logan. The French government doesn't listen.

Just, where has common sense gone?

Re:Shamed of being French right now

[IgnoramusMaximus]

In the absence of copyright law, the amount of music created would not be the socially optimal one. Fewer people would choose a career in music (and, contrary to popular misconceptions, it is not true that genuinely talented individuals would play anyway -- you can be incredibly talented and motivated by profit, romantic myths notwithstanding), less good music would be made (since record companies would have less money to spend on new artists), etc.

This is where you are 100% wrong. A 99% reduction in production of what currently passes as "art" would have no impact whatsoever as the only thing that profit motive motivates is utter kitsch. One artist who does art as art must be done: as an internal calling to express himself, is worth 1000 "for profit" schmucks manufactured by media companies to be "products". And this is all there is to it.

Human civilization was awash in art long before there was a copyright and it will remain so long after the idiotic idea bites the dust.

Unless of course by "socially optimal" you mean for some selected view mega-corporate fiefdoms to be raking in billions running an elaborate scam, at a mere expense of a totalitarian police state required to make the scheme stick in the age of digital communications.

At the moment, each artist is free to choose whether he wants to release its works for free, or charge a fee. If this fee is too high, consumers can buy another, less expensive CD, or simply not listen to music anymore.

You are making the fundamental errors all "greed philosophers" do: that art is a "product" to be bought and sold. Followed by even more grave scientific error: that art forms based on pure information can be traded at all, as information does not posses the required attributes to be a trade-able "private property".

The government's job is simply to make sure that everyone's choice is not violated. Nobody looses out because of copyright law: if you refuse to listen to a song because it is too expensive, you haven't lost anything!

Except a host of personal freedoms. In order for the government to enforce the idiotic copyright regime designed for ink splattered on a by product of dead trees, and which is wholly unworkable in a digital age, the only path available to the government is wholesale monitoring of all communications coupled with draconian "guilty until proven otherwise" measures we see proposed more and more frequently. This is simply a straightforward logical outcome of the concept of "copyright". While it was practically workable in an age where only few select individuals were capable of possessing an ability to copy a book, it is no longer so in a world in which the cost of duplication is approaching zero and the means of which are in the hands of every member of the society. The only way to make copyright workable again is to reverse the technological progress (i.e. to make sure that the cost of duplication becomes astronomical again and/or it is only available to select elites). Which of course has the desired side-effect of restoring control of all mass communications (and thus political speech) to the "right people".

If, however, copyright is abolished or file sharing legalized, the artist's freedom is threatened (since he cannot decide who gets access to his music).

No such control ever existed. It is like trying to control who has access to the photons bouncing off your ass when you walk on a major city street. The very definition of art is a mass dissemination of the artist's expressions. Every artist (as opposed to a greed-motivated kitsch "manufacturer") has an intrinsic desire to spread his message as widely as possible. Attempting to control who gets the message is the very anathema of art. The moment you try you cease to become an artist.

How is this

Re:Why do Politicians actually care?

[PopeRatzo]

They're a bunch of bureaucratic, cheese crazed socialists and that's not the sort of place I want to live in.

To anyone who's had their financial life destroyed by medical bills here in the US, I bet it sounds pretty good, actually.

Re:so we can hate the french again?

[feathersmg]

Most French don't like him either (and no, not just because of filesharing)

Geez, he didn't get elected all that long ago. What did he do to piss everyone off so quickly?

Well, he just did what he promised to do : help rich people to earn more money, throw more and more dark skinned people in jail, etc ... Indeed, at least 53% of french people can't read and vote for the candidate most seen on TV. The problem is : all elections are over, president and national assembly are elected and we're stuck with him and all his friends for the next 4 years.

Re:This and G8...

[azgard]

I'll give you example from my country (Czech Republic). Most people here (70%) supported gay marriage before politicians supported it. Last year (I believe) it passed, but just so-so.

Anyway, Switzerland has 150 years of experience with this. So there are some empirical results. And they show, for the most part, that voters are very conservative, and usually resist any change. Switzerland had voting rights for women until very recently, for example. On the other hand, they have pretty decent human rights record.

I don't know why you assume that elected government is somehow able to protect minorities better. In fact, I would challenge you to come up with a historic example where the elites protected some (non-elite) minority better than the majority of people would.

Oh, I see why you think that. You believe that politicians protect minorities because they will gain their support. But it's an illusion. If the protection of minorities is unpopular, why would they risk doing something unpopular and lose the majority? If you think about it, there is no way they could support a minority view and gather more support than by supporting majority view. Unless, of course, the majority doesn't really care about the minority, which is in fact most commonly the case.

Re:This and G8...

[damienl451]

Well, for starters, maybe it's also impossible to determine whether the right to vote is objectively good or bad?

Regardless, the major problem with your analysis is to assume that people do indeed vote randomly. If it were the case, your argument would be spot on and one of democracy's biggest flaws would not be a source of concern. If uneducated people vote randomly, their votes basically cancel out (as your correctly pointed out) and smart people choose which policy will be implemented.

In the real world, however, voters do not simply vote randomly. They have systematically biased beliefs that influence the way they vote.

In the world you describe, if asked about NAFTA, average people would basically flip a coin and vote either in favor or against it at random. Economists, however, would know better and choose the right policy, which would then be implemented. In the real world, people are much more likely to vote against it because they share the same misconceptions about NAFTA and free trade! Thus, although some people know better, their voices are not heard and bad policies get chosen.

You should read Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter , he makes this argument very convincingly.

Re:Why do Politicians actually care?

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, the French public medical system works so well that 92% of its residents carry supplementary private medical insurance and there are copayments or deductibles ranging from 10-40%. And despite the public oversight it still manages to be the 3rd most expensive system (in terms of % of GDP) in the world.

That does not change the fact that in France, people don't go broke, lose their homes, declare bankruptcy just because their child got sick. More important, the French don't have to make the Sophie's Choice of whether to fix a daughter's asthma or a son's nearsightedness.

We're going to be hearing a lot more about how awful universal health-care is and how being able to afford an operation takes away a person's liberty, but increasingly, people just aren't buying that baloney.