French Senate Passes Anti-Piracy Internet Cut-Off Law

An anonymous reader writes "The French Senate has approved a three strikes law for Internet users who download copyrighted entertainment media without paying for it. If, after two warnings, a person continues to download pirated music and movies, the internet service providers would cut off access for a year. Quoting: 'The legislation passed with a massive cross-party majority of 297 votes to 15. Only a handful of conservatives, centrists and socialists voted against, while the Communists abstained. In passing the bill, the senators rejected an amendment proposed by senator Bruno Retailleau of the right-wing MPF party replacing internet cut-off with a fine. ... The bill sets up a tussle between France and Brussels. In September, the European Parliament approved by a large majority an amendment outlawing internet cut-off." We discussed the introduction of this legislation several months ago.

Comments

The Vivendi law

[pieterh]

This law was mainly pushed by Vivendi but there are powerful backers from all across the spectrum:

* Telecoms firms that want a mandate to filter all Internet traffic so that they can block all P2P, and then VoIP, and then video streaming and then anything which competes with their monopoly products.
* Large ISPs, because these are now all owned by the telecoms firms.
* Vendors like Cisco because they want to sell loads and loads of expensive filtering equipment.
* The music industry, because it still thinks it's going to sue its way back onto the right side of history. Stupid kloten, when will they learn?
* The movie industry, because they've drunk the music industry koolaid.
* The TV industry, because they want to sell more DVDs and because their distributors in the digital age are, of course, the ISPs.
* And finally, certain software firms, because the only way to implement this law, finally, is to use a fully locked down operating system that only runs authorized software, so no Linux.

The French tried so hard to get this same law pushed through the European Parliament, but that seems to be saner.

There are similar legislative pushes all around Europe, at the national level, and for the same reasons.

The Internet is, really, under attack from concerted and powerful forces that hate what those free packets represent.

Re:Passing a Law Against What Everyone Does

[Kjella]

Please be sure to speak for yourself only and not assume that "everyone" does it.

Maybe not everyone, but a majority does in some age / sex brackets. Here's the latest stats from Q2 2008 here in Norway in percent of Internet users (which is 84% of all households, the rest mostly very old people). And they didn't have a category for those under 16 either:

File sharers: 19%

Males: 25%
Females: 12%

16-24: 47%
25-34: 31%
35-44: 13%
45-54: 5%
55-64: 1%
65-74: 0%

While the data isn't on that level, with a 2:1 ratio of males to females and 47% in the 16-24 age bracket overall, I'd estimate about 62% of males and 31% of females 16-24 do file sharing. That's right, if you're a young male and don't file share, you're probably in the minority. Note that this is the "file sharing" numbers, it's NOT the "watched youtube online" numbers. And while there's always the assumption that people will "settle down" when they get older, I think this trend will only continue as today's file sharers grow older.