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French "Three Strikes" Law Gets New Life
Kjella writes "A little over a week ago we discussed the EU's forbidding of disconnecting users from the Internet. But even after having passed with an 88% approval in the European Parliament, and passing through the European Commission, it was all undone last week. The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package. This means that there's now nothing stopping France's controversial 'three strikes' law from going into effect. What hope is there for a 'parliament' where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?"
The EU is a great idfea but the execution is terrible. The council should be destroyed, stricken from the legislature.
That anyone on the council thought that this was even remotely conscionable tells you just how undemocratic the people on it are. The fact that they could then go and do this tells you how undemocratic the council system is.
Get rid of it. It's sick.
The European parliament in Strassbourg (France): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Institutions_europeennes_IMG_4292.jpg
I see my country's flag. Yet my voice can not be heard.
This French law is stupid, but to what extent should the badly-run shady organization in Brussels overturn by fiat laws made by the National Assembly?
The European Union executive runs roughshod over the European Parliament; there is much backroom dealing and invisible lobbying. Under such conditions I don't think the laws passed have much legitimacy, even if they achieve good results (they rarely do). Depending on the dictators from Brussels to enforce freedom in France is a contradiction in terms.
\end{rant}
The EU is something of the worst parts of a government and a diplomatic organization. It wants to pretend to be the unified European government, but it really isn't. It also isn't democratically elected or directly accountable to it's constituents.
The basic problem is that the European nations wanted to create a union that was along the lines of the United States (which as the name implies is a union of independent states). However they half-assed it. The reason the United States is so powerful is because of the united nature. While the states are independent, the laws of one do not affect the laws of another, they are all a lesser part of the whole. The states have to do as the federal government says and there is no leaving the union (that was what the civil war was actually about, can you leave the union). Though separate, they act as a whole.
Now this means two important things on a governmental level:
1) The federal government has real power. It can make laws, treaties and so on that the several states are required to abide by (within the bounds allowed in the Constitution). There isn't any weaseling out of it or leaving. Thus the government can speak for the US as a whole.
2) The government is directly accountable to the people. The federal government is elected by the citizens of the states, and thus is accountable to them. If they behave in a way the citizens don't like, they can be ousted as happened in this most recent election. Though it is a republic, not a democracy, it is still a democratic process where the people in the states say who will lead, not the leaders of the states.
Well unless the EU is willing to do this sort of thing, then crap like this ruling will happen. It isn't a real government. It has some trappings of a government, and some authority like it, but it isn't really a government.
I really think the EU needs to change. They either need to go all the way, become a unified nation fully, or they need to scale back, and basically become a trading bloc. This "We're a European government but not really and you don't get to elect us," is just bad news IMO.
And the last time Bush did something without the legislature voting for it was when?
Hey, you ain't telling me nothing new. here in AR We, The People, have voted like 4 times for a damned lotto. And so far the bible thumpers have found some legal BS way to weasel out of listening to us 3 times. This past election yet again we voted for a lotto, this time by nearly 3 to 1. The profits will ensure that all the children of AR can have a free college education if they keep up their grades.
So now I am just waiting on those God Damned bible thumpers to find yet ANOTHER way of screwing us out of what we voted for. You know, it really is a shame we can't have a "thump a bible thumper" day, as that would be something I would look forward to like Xmas and 4th of July all wrapped together.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Time for another line from yes minister (about a compulsory European ID card): "The Germans will love it, the French will ignore it and the Italians will be too disorganised to implement it; it's only the British who will resent it"
While 'Let the French do what the Fench think is good for France' is a good sentiment, the way it works is that the EU presidency rotates around every 6 months, and during those 6 months, whichever country hold the presidency has a completely free hand to try and force the craziest nonsense from their law books onto the rest of Europe.
The UK forced 2 years retention of electronic communications particulars through, for instance. (Which I suspect that they did because they wouldn't have got enough support for the measure at home)
FGD 135
This is all about the music industry trying to disconnect people from the internet who copy music. What is their problem? Turn on the radio, there's some of their precious music playing. Turn on the TV, you can hear their music. Go into a shop, it's playing there too. They even have special shows on TV, just about commercial music. Even special TV channels about commercial music.
Record companies pay radio stations to play their songs so that people can hear it. They put a lot of effort into making video clips so that the song can get on TV so that people can hear it. Do they care if you record music off the radio? Nope. Do they care if you record a video clip on TV? Nope. Do they want you to hear their music? They say they do, and they act like they do.
But if you copy a song on the internet because you want to hear it, suddenly they are all screaming "Cut them off from the internet! We're going to sue those illegal downloaders who tried to hear our music! We'll sue them for thousands of dollars per song!" Why? Don't they want people to hear their music? Isn't that why they pay radio stations to play their songs? Isn't that why they make expensive video clips?
Why do they want to cut people off from the internet? Why aren't they saying "This is a great way to get people to listen to our music! And we don't even have to pay, unlike the radio and TV stations"? Why are they trying to kick people off the internet, sue them, bankrupt them, wreck their lives? But if you listen to a song on the radio, they're really happy about it. Listen to it on the internet, you're dead meat.
Sure they don't make money from downloads, but they don't make money from radio or TV either. It costs them money. What's the real problem?
Well not exactly.
First of all, this is the Council of the European Union, not the European Council. Everybody confuses them (and also with the Council of Europe, with is not related with European Union. Someone even mixed up with the European Commission some comments above). Some people argue that people make things hard (like similar names hard to remember), so that it's harder to fight (you can't fight what you don't understand).
Also, the Council wasn't led by Sarkozy, but by Luc Chatel, secretary of State for Consumer affairs and Industry. But it's true that nobody in the French government would have the guts to make Sarkozy unhappy on purpose. They are totally devoted to him. So incidentally we can indeed say that Sarkozy led the Council even if he wasn't here.
Laquadrature published something more accurate : Citizen safeguards striked out in EU Council
Woa, kinda alarmist, don't you think ?
The text hasn't been adopted yet. You can fin a nice diagram describing where we are in the current procedure. The step described in this article is the point #4=>#9. The next step will be #11. But first, there will be a tripartite meeting (Council + MEPs + commission) and probably a #10 as commission and council doesn't agree.
So there will be a second reading by the EP. So please stop saying that UE is a dictatorship. There are a lot of things to notice before we can say that :
Again, nobody says that EU is perfect. Of course it isn't. But saying that "The EU is a great idea but the execution is terrible.", or other thing I read in the comments, seems disproportionated to me. It's probably due to the fact that the article was mis
They're mostly on the side of angels. Seriously. Maybe the fact that they don't have that much actual power forces them to act more responsibly. I don't know. But they usually side with the good guys.
The European Court of Human Rights (which is not an EU institution, but close enough) acts as a last measure in many cases, much like the SCOTUS but w/o Adolf, err Antonin Scalia. They forced many positive changes in our disturbingly creepy judicial practices.
In other matters the Commission forced the break up of the former telecom monopoly, which resulted in one of the highest broadband penetration in the world. They might next save us from the current oligopoly in the mobile phone network industry, which holds firmly in place because corrupt motherfucker Sarkozy is best buddies with many a stakeholder.
Demand that your countries council representative be directly elected. This exactly how the US Senate became democratic early last century: Campaigns in Oregon and Nevada forced those states to elect their Senators, and once they had, the rest had eventually to follow suit.
Once a large EU member or a few small ones do this, the same will happen in the EU.
Another reason why this is the best way to reform the EU is that doing it this way does not threaten further integration: the representative would be a creature of national law, not EU law. A 'Top down' reform like the proposed constitution is always difficult because raises the spectre of further integration, but this would not require a change to the treaties.