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

Hopefully this will improve my karma...

[Per Wigren]

Fuck you, Nicolas Sarkozy!

Re:Shamed of being French right now

[cpt kangarooski]

The consumer habits change argument is hardly convincing.

I don't know. It strikes me as being, if not compelling, at least strongly influential. By and large, laws should reflect the norms of the society which grants authority to those laws. If people are willing to make commercial infringement actionable, but wish to legalize non-commercial infringement, then why not do that? True, if there is a sufficiently compelling reason to go against societal norms, then that would be an issue but that's not always going to be true. For example, in the US, the government was in the right in attacking segregation in the Civil Rights era, but was in the wrong in attacking drinking in the Prohibition era; Racial equality was worth going against social norms, but sobriety was not.

At the root, the idea is that a temporary monopoly over one's works is necessary to motivate artists to devote time to creating new works.

Broadly, I would agree. However, I'd remind you that it is just as much in the public interest to cause new works to be created and published as it is in having the monopoly be as sharply limited during its existence and in having it last for as short a time as possible, if at all. Basically, the public wants the most works for the least copyright.

If it were simply a change in consumer habits, I'd happily say laissez-faire . If people are not interested in music anymore, let record companies disappear! Here, however, we are faced with a slightly different situation. It is not that people are not interested in music anymore, but that they have found a way to illegitimately acquire a perfect substitute without having to bear the costs that went into producing it. In other words, we have a free rider problem, and I'd argue that it will lead to societally sub-optimal outcomes

I think this is the crux of the issue. If there is a free rider problem, then I would suggest permitting some of that free ridership (again, the socially acceptable non-commercial sort; even most casual infringers dislike commercial piracy). The system will just reach a new level of equilibrium. Since we place roughly equal value not only on the number of works created, but also on how minimal the monopoly is in length and breadth, we're just trading one for the other. Apparently, our valuation of new works has decreased somewhat, in favor of greater freedom with regard to those works. There's nothing wrong with this; their proportions are not fixed, after all.

Besides, if it winds up being as bad as you suggest, then I expect that people will realize this, and will once again revise copyright, this time upwards.

Further, bear in mind that we may have a sub-optimal copyright law on the books now! Remember that for over a century, copyright law worldwide has largely been written by authors and publishers, often with little regard for the public interest. There would seem to be a good possibility that they have overshot the socially-optimal copyright law and that reducing the law would bring us closer to the ideal. Please don't assume that just the current law is the better law merely because it is on the books.

In the absence of copyright law, the amount of music created would not be the socially optimal one.

That actually depends on some other factors -- no copyright law is a legitimate option, if every possible copyright law would produce an even worse social outcome. But the choice is not between the current law and no law at all. There is a gigantic spectrum in between those two positions, and we can enact any manner of law in that legal space. E.g. instead of a term of zero years or a term of life+70 years, we could have a term of x years where 0If, however, copyright is abolished or file sharing legalized, the artist's freedom is threatened (since he cannot decide who gets access to his music).

What if we legalize otherwise infringing acts engaged in between natural persons, if those acts are also non-commercial in nature? Then a musician can still exclusi