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Trick Used To Pass French "Three Strikes"
Glyn Moody writes "France's 'Loi Hadopi' — better known as 'three strikes and you're out' — was passed by the National Assembly late last night when only 16 deputies were present (the vote was 12 in favor, 4 against). Most politicians had left because it was expected that the vote would take place next week. In this way, President Sarkozy has sneaked his controversial legislation through the French parliament — and shown his contempt for the democratic process. So now what?"
While my initial thought is "Shame on those people who subverted the democratic process" I can't help but think.. "Shame on the faulty system with such a stupid loophole." Did they subvert the democratic process? Kinda. But did they do things within the boundries of their law? Apparently so.
So shame on those living in France expecting anything different from their dumb system.
It's like having an insurance policy, and when the insurance company decides to be assholes and use their technicalities to avoid paying you, well, shame on you for signing on to such an obviously flawed contract.
(Please note, I'm not claiming my country is any better.)
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
It's not the end of the world, probably.
Ever heard of Quorum? The French should add that to their rules/constitution to prevent that crap Sheesh
Shame on everyone. Shame on him for 'tricking' this into law. Shame on everyone that left early because they didn't care about anything else that was left.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The fault is on the current elected officials. If they were present at parliament like they are supposed too, this would not happen. We vote for them to be at parliament, not for them to go only they feel like it. Even if the vote would only take place next week, its their obligation to be at parliament. Pity its never like that, not in Portugal and not in France it seems...
What's the French word for "quorum" ? Clearly the National Assembly should be using it here. Dolts.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
So now what?
revolution!
Sounds like sour grapes to me. News Flash: Politicians use these procedural tricks all the time, why do you think that said tricks exist? At someone point, some other guys slid laws through on the same deal. Look at the absurd things the US does - the Patriot Act, Obama's "bailout" plans, that nobody ever reads, but people vote on.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
does anyone really care?
-I- myself have great contempt for the democratic process, but I would actually point to these kind of shenanigans as part of the reason why!
I was thinking the same thing... How was anyone at work at 2200 hours? Aren't they all supposed to stop working after 6 hours and only have 4 day work weeks?
It's a joke, laugh.
BadAnalogyGuy such a fitting name.
Seriously if there was only 16 people here, even the hard working people in that country could not fathom their elected body could be so complacent.
And since you're certainly from the USA, well in France they actually read what they sign >.>
Heck you didn't even follow the whole process and come on your high horse? WTF were you doing when DMCA was being voted? Where was your white horse when Patriot Act was passed?
The people who showed "contempt for the democratic process" were the people who left early.
You have no right to complain....period.
Democracy is about leading dumbfuck people (the majority) in order to screw them the more you can, cause there is no other reason to want to lead those dumbfucks in the first place....
Cause if you are intelligent, you know that either
a: you cannot change people to have them become smarter...
b: according to a, either you become a leader and fuck them, or you get screwed like all the other dumbfucks....except you actually know you are screwed.
conclusion: vote is useless to intelligent people cause they are the minority.
Two more and the grass mud horse is out.
Captch is "homers" What are the odds of that?
The Parent *is not* a troll.
As a Brit, I hate to have to defend our old adversaries, but I have to step in here, as I think you're being a little unfair. You say the French are lazy, but I can tell you that they are more than willing to work quite hard. As long as it isn't August of course. Or one of their many holidays. Or within 30 minutes of their official close of business. Or anywhere near lunch. And so long as they aren't on strike. But other than that, absolutely nose-to-the-grindstone tireless hard workers for sure.
Oh no... it's the future.
Yes, fsck us all. Angry mobs are democracy too. I'd be particularly leery of the French ones.
This is /. not the Huffington Post.
To bring this topic back home; much better would be 3 strikes and you're assigned to a write man pages for the opensource X.org projects.
Unpopular legislation is almost always passed in such ways. And now the blame for its passing is limited to a select few. I have to wonder if these loopholes and subversive means aren't there to protect lawmakers from having to make decisions that would get them booted from office? That is to say, while they support the legislation, they wouldn't want to be on record as having voted for it... so they "look the other way" while a team of patsies come in to do the dirty work for them.
A country with a 577-member body that allows 16 people to constitute quorum? If that's actually the case, that country deserves what it gets.
Say it ain't so.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Like the UK.
Best Slashdot Co
What, like proposing a bank rescue bill, and tagging on a clause criminalising the act of employers distinguishing between physical and mental health for insurance purposes?
Of course, Obama does not subvert the democratic process, because he is a Democrat and the epitome of virtue. If you are Good, you are not Bad.
The vote happened at 22:45 (10:45pm). So, let's hypothetically walk through the events of the night leading up to this point. 41 hours and 40 minutes earlier (TFA doesn't actually give a start time), so they started discussions Wednesday morning at 3:05am. This seems amazing for Frenchmen. Anyway, after about 40 hours and 55 minutes, around 10:00pm the next day, everyone thinks it's late and this is getting a little over the top. So, everyone starts mingling around and leaving. By 10:40pm just about everyone is gone, so the decision to take the vote happens. The four who voted "no" were actually supposed to vote "yes", but were so tired at this point that they raised their hands at the wrong time. With marathon sessions like this, no wonder silly laws get passed. By the end they don't even know what they are voting for.
Here's an AP article, which is a little more reputable than a blog.
And here's some commentaries that zdnet rounded up.
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774,39390853,00.htm
I can't see this one standing. The French have shown a tendency to strike/riot on issues lately. Once the citizens get hold of how this went down they'll get good and angry.
That's under 3% of all France's deputies... no more comments
I can't call that English
Yeah right. Talking nonsense again, right?
European surveys have proved that French people actually work longer hours than Brits.
Don't believe me?
Check this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/mar/31/uk-long-working-hours
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/surveys/ewcs2005/index.htm
I have seen Brits and Swiss jerks leave their office at 5:00pm while I stayed at my desk until 10:00pm past. So that kind of "joke" is truly lame.
And yes, I work in France.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
If it's a three strikes law, use it to your advantage. Keep reporting all the incidents everywehere - Sarkozy hums a copyrighted tune? Report it. Flood the government or whatever bodies with reports on all potential copyright infringement by the members. After all, don't we already have proof that they do this? It should be trivial to just report that their children have broken the law as well. Keep reporting them and get their internet connections cut off.
Sort of like "work to rule" campaigns - you make the rulemakers suffer under their own rules as well.
Heck, bonus points for those who can get the Internet cut off at no only their personal residences, but also to government buildings also.
The US Senate(?) did almost the exact same thing in 1913 to get the Federal Reserve Act passed. We seem to learn little from history sometimes...sad :( ...if you haven't seen it yet, movie - Freedom to Fascism, by Aaron Russo
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
Wait, wait, a brit joking about the french not being hardworking? Allow me to laugh out aloud in my best phony French. Ahahahahaha!
I do not live in France, but nevertheless in my own country, where there are supposed to be checks and balances, I believe there aren't enough of them. It is possible, if a single party gets more than 50% of the House and Senate, for that party to do almost anything with impunity. Sure, it takes effort to pass a bill into law since it must pass in both chambers of Congress and then get signed into law by the President. But because government is an entity that tends toward corruption and total control, I think the Constitution should have thrown a few additional monkey wrenches into the gears and added the following requirements to the mix:
1. A mandatory waiting period of one year from completion of the writing of a bill until it can be voted on by legislators. The bill must be made available to the public at the start of this waiting period. This forces a review and comment period. If the text of the bill changes, the waiting period restarts.
2. More eyes. After a bill passes both houses, it must be shelved until at least 50% of the members of both houses have changed. Once that happens, the bill must pass both houses a second time. Only then does it land on the President's desk. This means that the passage of bills into law requires the NEXT Congress to agree with the current one.
3. "One subject matter." In other words, you can't sneak a failed bill regulating commerce into the bowels of another bill regulating something else.
4. "Plain English," and "Reasonable length," meaning an eighth-grader should be able to read and understand the bill. As a bonus, instead of "Reasonable length," the Constitution should have defined a hard length limit of, say, 200 pages in a bill, where each page may only contain up to a maximum of a certain number of words. No more bills so long they need all of Google's storage capacity to store them and vote on them without reading them. Not to mention, if you can't explain it in 200 pages, it's probably too complicated to be understood by the public, which will be expected to abide by it.
5. A Constitution-defined ceiling on the total number of pages in law. Once that limit is reached, they can't add pages until other pages are repealed to make room. Repealing should be as complicated as enacting, by the way. Say, 100,000 pages total maximum number of pages in law. This is a HUGE number! To put things into perspective, the federal tax law takes up 70,000 pages. That's just ONE law. There must be millions of pages of complicated, convoluted law. This is ridiculous! You are somehow expected to know and abide by the law, but it is impossible for any person to actually know so much. Laws are misunderstood, and this allows lawyers and other corrupt people to take advantage of normal people. There should be a hard limit.
What is it with the assholes who submit stories around here that they can't even be bothered to explain in a phrase or sentence what the story is about? Are pixels suddenly $1000 a pound?
Why should it be presumed that I (or anybody) knows what the hell the "Loi Hadopi" is? Why should anyone have to waste 5 minutes Googling just to read a Slashdot story? It turns out that the matter is quite important, but I'm quite sure that most people around here, or anywhere, for that matter, don't follow French politics closely enough to be on top of it. It never hurts to explain it again.
Homerun Fries and Homerun Toast!
Obviously stupid, but a lot of people will lose internet access just like a lot of people sitting in jail could be living productive lives just like cigarette and alchohol vendors.
Three strikes and you are out is a ridiculously low standard, so you can be sure that it will not be enforced on the elite. If it ever is, the law will be revoked.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's the latest thing in Europe, contempt for the will of the people.
We've seen in with the EU Constitution treaty, and with the Lisbon treaty, and this is just another example.
It'll continue until there's another blood drenched coup d'etat, but technology makes it harder for citizens to rise up without getting stomped on.
The next time the French people drag out the guillotine, it won't be for the monarchy or the aristocracy. It'll be for the politicians. And maybe the bankers.
What this slashdot post needs is:
1. A description of the law that was passed. 'three strikes and you're out' isn't very descriptive. I'm assuming it has to do with file sharing and cutting off people's internet connections?
2. How many deputies were supposed to be there? 18? 100? 300?
In Comparative Politics, France is considered an odd country. The President has almost unlimited power; there is no system in place to remove him except for the next popular election. He does have the power to remove the Prime Minister from power, which is the opposite of how the system usually works in the case of a system with both a PM and a President. Russia acted like it had a similar system until Putin switched from President to PM.
Sarkozy has been using MGMT's wonderful song kids without permission. He did offer one euro to settle.
This kind of shenanigans has happened in Canada, too. Votes should stay open for 24 hours to disallow this kind of fraud.
the fallacy is in thinking that the government has any ability to enforce the laws they create on the topic of intellectual property. any law in regard to file sharing is akin to trying to herd cats two states over: does anyone really think that some chinese or russian or brazilian teenager with a broadband connection is aware, or even cares?
and if they don't, then for western teenagers in western nations with retarded intellectual property laws, its simply a matter of dipping into this transnational bounty of filesharing that is forever beyond the reach of idiotic national laws
so go ahead france, australia, the usa: pass your ridiculous 3 strikes law, dmca, whatever. who fucking cares?
intellectual property law was a gentleman's agreement from a dead era when there were only a few publishers (oh, you thought ip law was for the benefit of creators? ha!). but now ip law is now a conceptual dinosaur in the age of the internet. western nations depend heavily on the idea of intellectual property. well: get used to losing the concept
all that has to happen, all that is going to happen over the next few decades is that western nations have to get used to the extinction of intellectual property law as an enforceable concept in the age of the internet
when someone loses something dear to them, they go through 5 stages of grief. the first stage is denial. that is where western legal systems are now at in reliation to the death of intellectual property law as a valid, enforceable idea
its over
ip law is dead
everyone just shrug at france. the laws you see passed will get only more ridiculous and more desperate in the west, until finally a critical mass of legislators in western nations begin to wake up and take notice that its all just a giant fucking joke
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While of course I was being humorous, come on, the best you can do to back up your case is an article by a comedian? Other sources say different.
"A quarter of the workforce - around 7million people - put in more than 48 hours a week.
That puts us way ahead of the rest of Europe and even the hard-grafting Americans, says the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency. "
Oh no... it's the future.
They should (peacefully) scrap their government and try it again. If I recall correctly, they've done it 17 times since the French Revolution.
Do not be so quick to fault the French. Seems to me recent stories about the US Congress show new tricks to avoid obtaining a majority of 60 votes to pass legislation increasing taxes or doing budgets because it allowed the minority party a voice. Hell even if they have to abide by their own rules they found gimmicks to get around them to include having the administrative branch issue POs
Summary, in all "Democratic" countries, democracy only works until the ruling parties figured out they were immune to the wishes of the voters and rule of law.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The extra two are in case of Corsicans.
The majority, esp. under Emperor Naboleon Sarkozy, has quasi tyrannical powers, and can employ various tricks to make sure the minority can't pull a trick like showing up en masse when the majority's away.
Furthermore they employed various procedural tricks -- they tend to do that almost all the time now actually -- to ram their laws through parliament without leaving any chance for the opposition to delay or discuss.
Now this certainly does not excuse the main opposition party for not showing up, with few exceptions such as my own representative Mr. Bloche, but it couldn't possibly have made any difference in the legislative process.
I watched most of the debates on this law in the lower chamber, and the majority never even responded to very precise, technical questions asked by critics of the law, including members of their own party.
An interesting side note: the very few opponents of the law in the ruling party are the only IT professionals, such as Tardy who owns a small IT consultancy, and Dionis du Sejour who used to be the CIO of a major company. All their colleagues had no fucking clue what they were talking about; take for instance the minister herself, who believes OpenOffice is or has a firewall. I shit you not.
The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for quorum.
Citation nécessaire.
Boy, those jokes never get old!
...And then I remembered I was reading Slashdot, so they really don't. Surrender Frenchies, welcome all 640k of your new hot grit overlords. That should be enough for anybody.
Never, ever try to get a French bureaucrat to work after hours. Sarkozy's real problem is he's pushing an American-style work ethic. France will have non of that, unless there's food or wine involved.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Or those that should have been opposing it really wanted it to pass, so they left early. Thus the bill passes and they get to save face and say they never had a chance to vote on it.
Similar shenanigans go on in Congress all the time. Have you ever noticed how many votes pass by a single vote. The majority of Congress may want to get something unpalatable passed, then there is wheeling and dealing by some to get on the losing side. This allows them to vote against the bill and still go back home saying they opposed Congress for their own constituents, when the reality is they were ok with it getting passed.
t
French rifle for sale. Dropped twice. Never fired.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
This article nicely illustrates the French attitude to work. To quote:
In most circumstances, it is impossible for workers to receive French unemployment benefit if they have been employed in another country, but they need to do only one day of work in France to be able to make a claim there. And if they have worked less than 28 days, that claim will be based upon their previous salary.
So, an unemployed French banker from London goes back to France, works for one day in McDonalds and it entitled to about $100,000 per annum unemployment benefit! I wouldn't work either.
HADOPI, the office which is charged with overseeing the three-strikes system, stands for "haute autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet" which more or less means "high authority for the distribution of [creative] works and the protection of internet rights".
I know that some level of doublespeak is to be expected of politics, but calling a government office whose express purpose is to limit what people can do on the internet the office for protection of internet rights? Damn. Maybe I'm just naïve though.
To be fair, the French military have been historically pretty kick-ass. (For example, the French Foreign Legion.) It's just WWI and WWII where they fell down.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I am partly confused. Is there no requirement for a quorum of at least 50% to do business? From wikipedia, I see that there are 577 deputies. If there was a requirement for at least 50% to be present then there would have to be 289 deputies. I thought that the rules in the US congress were strange but at least they have a quorum requirement.
Over at The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/03/french_three_strikes/
Sig this!
Allow a 24 hour window for the politicians to cast their vote.
Are they going to send the police down on every "pirate" ? Or are they just going to assume that as the owner of the offensive ip they recorded, you are automatically liable ?
Arguably this doesn't make much sense in a practical perspective.
>Maybe if the French were more like their leader instead of being shiftless, lazy bums who'd rather shirk work and live off the dole than to actually perform the duties they were hired for, perhaps they could have participated in the democracy.
Turnout in the 2007 French Presidential election was 84% of registered voters and 77% of all citizens eligible to vote. In the 2008 United States Presidential election, turnout was 62% of citizens eligible to vote. Voter turnout in lower house parliamentary/congressional elections since 1960 has averaged 76% in France and 54% in the United States. (Source: Wikipedia)
Clearly the French participate in their democracy in significantly higher numbers than Americans. Perhaps you could have looked into this before slagging them for not participating.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
French shops and supermarkets open around 8.00am or 9.00am, have two hours lunchbreaks from 12pm to 2pm, but they work later until around 7.00pm or 8.00pm. Annoying if you are on holiday because you then have to schedule your day around the lunchbreak; shops in the morning, supermarket in the afternoon. But it is good for the office workers.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Surfing the net and posting on slashdot doesn't count as work. Not even in France.
He has nothing to do with the fact it was voted early. The President has strictly no power about that. He can be rightfully criticised on many things, no need to criticse him about things he has no power on.
I don't know why we have this anti-anti-work ethic. Why shouldn't the French try to work as little as possible especially when their country maintains such a high level of industrialization and influence in other parts of the world?
Oh wait....
"In this way, President Sarkozy has sneaked his controversial legislation through the French parliament -- and shown his contempt for the democratic process."
-No he didn't show contempt for the Democratic Process. He put the measure up for a vote and it was voted on. Showing contempt for the Democratic Process would be issuing a decree, rather than asking for a vote.
You can blame the others, not Sarkozy, as they should have been updating themselves about governmental goings-on more often.
(Mod article -1 for "Politically Slanted Summary")
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
And yes, I work in France.
That would make you a member of a minority group.
Ahhh So now don't commit three felonies in France. Seems like a reasonable answer to me.
Hungarian law requires half of all MP's to be present to make any vote legit. I imagine it would have helped here.
For some odd reason, Hungarian law does not apply in France. Something about them being independent countries. Yeah, really.
I have seen Brits and Swiss jerks leave their office at 5:00pm while I stayed at my desk until 10:00pm past.
Hmm, and who exactly is the winner here?
And you haven't read a single word of what I posted, right? Lame.
From the same article you dismissed:
Longest hours worked in Europe (31 countries surveyed)
1 Turkey: 54 hours; 29 UK: 35 hours (EU average: 39 hours)
UK is 29th out of 31 countries surveyed.
I rest my case.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It's just WWI and WWII where they fell down.
In a world where hsitory is always forgotten, that's all that matters.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
Uhm... Yes there are many crazy loop holes in our system as well, but raising taxes or passing a budget does not need 60 votes, only a simple majority ( with the current size of the senate that would be 51). Sixty votes are required to end discussion on a bill ( a filibuster), so the minority can block any piece of legislation as long as it has 41 votes. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Revolution?
The guy should lose his job at best, at worst, spend some time in jail for subverting the democratic process...
How about a three strikes law of my own (equally applicable to lawmakers here in the US): if a law you voted for is subsequently struck down in appeals courts or the Supreme Court, three times, you go to jail, with no possibility of parole.
and I think my health suffered because of it. At first I was annoyed. Then I got mad. And then I was completely flabbergasted.
The opposition asked thousands of extremely well informed and technically pointed questions. There was at times a hundred time more people watching the video stream than usual. They got tons of emails, which their staff would parse, print and bring to them during the discussions. They mentioned that several times. The majority never ever did, just sticking to their ridiculous talking points or, towards the end, not even bothering to reply.
The law is unbelievable. Its entire purpose is to circumvent the judiciary and castrate any right to a fair trial, because as soon as a normal legal recourse is available, the sheer mass of defendants would topple the rotten thing instantly.
This alone explains the many bizarre provisions of the law. For instance, when you get (or not, there is no hard requirements of delivery) an email warning, it doesn't mention what you were allegedly (or actually, what your connection was used for) downloading. That's right, they don't tell you. They just say, on that date and time, your connection was used to pirate shit, make it cease now, and here's a nice list of legal websites.
The official purpose for this non-disclosure is because the download might be pornographic, and that might cause problems for families if, say, the spouse finds out. I'm not making shit up, that's what the retarded sponsor Frank Riestert (a car salesman) said, it's in the record. But the real purpose is so that you can't easily dispute the allegations. In fact, it's almost impossible to find out what's been reported against you at the "warning" phase, you can only do so when the decision to cut you off has been taken.
Furthermore, the law explicitly limits the possibility for the accused to find out who detected the alleged infringement and how. You get to know (eventually) the copyright holder, but not which private policing outlet it had mandated for that purpose. Obviously this aims to limit the possibilities of suing for libellous accusations, or at least delay so much as to make it useless and therefore remove the incentive for the victims to sue so that this is not a bottleneck.
Said outlets' employees will have to swear an oath to be truthful in their reports, but the law says nothing about any due diligence. In other word, as long as they don't blatantly lie, it doesn't matter if the evidence is as flimsy as a mere IP address being advertised in a Pirate Bay tracker. As you may know, it only takes *one* HTTP request to put *any* IP in there.
This whole thing is insane. It is extremely likely to be thoroughly censored by the Constitutional Council (~ Supreme Court in this case) but that doesn't mean the end result won't be a disaster. The only hope is in the European Parliament, and if they finally pass their anti-3 strike amendment, it's on the European Court of Justice.
The translation says, "While the vote was not expected until next week, the few members in the chamber at the end of the discussion on the Creation and Internet law ..."
Wouldn't a Creation and Internet Law be all about copyrights and author-created materials being published on the internet? I don't see where this is about "three strikes and you're out."
Surely someone out there knows more than we've been told by this article.
Somalia is just about the only country which is truly free. You can do just about anything you want there.
But I doubt most people would want to live there.
The problem is, most people don't want true freedom. True freedom is truly dangerous. Realistically all these pseudo-anarchists want rules for everyone else, just not for themselves.
I wonder what they would do if someone came and busted out their windows and torched their cars?
I wonder if they would call the "police state" they are protesting?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Shame to the people who thought they could just walk away from a session and assume nobody would hijack it.
Haven't these people heard of a motion to recess?
And NOT ONLY do they WORK TIRELESSLY as all other around them shirk, slack off, or are just plain lazy, but they also have a fantastic sense of humour, nice cheese and wine that you can trust came from only one place. Plus they invented Euro Disney and the Eiffel tower - who but the french with their effervescent sense of fun could have come up with Mickey AND Alchohol, or a giant phallic symbol slap bang in the center of the capital? Who says that the French don't understand a joke? Pah, I pity them!
And the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. They got their asses handed to them.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
It also has been found that people who spend more time at their desk, get less done (or the same amount at most) as someone who works business hours
Just because you are at your desk does not mean you are being productive .. if you went home and came back fresh you might get more done
Perhaps the French government could look into this as well, a vote at 22:45! No wonder there was so few there ...
Requiring a quorum for all laws (as suggested by several posters above) could slow down the system. I think a better way to reduce this problem would be to allow proxy voting; when a deputy is not in session, they designate another deputy to vote on their behalf. Sixteen proxies wouldn't represent the populace as closely as a larger sample size of deputies would, but it would still be better than this.
Does anyone find it amusing that after all the ridicule the French heaped on Americans for electing Bush that they went and elected somebody even worse?
Two guilty parties do NOT make one of the parties innocent. We should point out faults wherever they may be.
Yeah, but are you French?
. . . is, for example, when you attempt to use your state's Supreme Court to over-rule your state's constitution during a presidential election.
If Sarkozy followed the laws of France, how did he show contempt? If the people of France are outraged, they should use the rules (i.e. the "democratic process") to change the rule and/or rid themselves of whoever outraged them.
What?
This article from Satirewire seems to fit here.
French Strike for Greater Productivity
This is exactly the reason I won't buy a house that is subject to a HOA, what part of "MY PROPERTY" do these tin dictators not understand.
In the 2008 United States Presidential election, turnout was 62% of citizens eligible to vote.
And that was the best turnout in almost 50 years. Most years are in the 50-55% range.
You can't have it both ways.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Or as you guys say (but we don't): "touché"
"It's just WWI and WWII where they fell down."
They WON WWI and WWII. Also, they have won a lot of smaller wars in the Napoleonic Wars. Too bad they tried to invade Russia, that never works.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
... there is no run-off ("second tour") there.
But the worst in our system is how senators get elected, by "great electors", most of which are mayors, of which most are of small towns, so that right-leaning types are over-represented.
Only certified private entities can report violations.
So now what?
Now we get all frothy mouthed and start screaming about incipient fascism like we would if an American President pulled the same stunt.
I fully agree, especially on the plain English and the amount of words ideas. It's particularly abhorrent that although all citizens are supposed to know and abide by the law no one actually tries to educate children in the law, because of course they bloody know that this is impossible. However, I do realize that some specialist areas might require extra laws and that as society evolves more and more specializations may arise. Since I wouldn't want to see food and drug safety regulations being scrapped in favour of nanotech guidelines, I propose that a) the basic page limit should be much much lower, so that anyone who enters the country could study all basic content within a week or two and b) that any additional legislation should have a simple sentence in front of the form: 'If you have never done X (or worked with Y or held office Z) the following laws and regulations don't apply to you.' Of course a framework is needed to prevent things like 'If you have never eaten, ...' but those are details that can be fixed.
Furthermore, I think that every law should be made publicly accessible by the government, including all details of who passed which law when. Wetten.overheid.nl for example already makes the laws publicly available, indexed and all, but no hint is given as to who voted for each law, at least not that I can find. Also note that law linked to is (at least for those who speak Dutch) a prime example of what is wrong with legalese. And on top of that, it defines embryo and foetus completely differently from the standard medical meaning. Any cel that has the potential for growing into a human being is an embryo? Really? Even the stem cells in my teeth? And if an embryo enters the human body it suddenly becomes a foetus? Am I, a man, filled with millions of foetus? Who knew... I think that should be another requirement for laws. No word shall be used in a meaning that disagrees with accepted usage, as defined by major dictionaries or applicable subject litterature.
Process does not replace having good people paying attention to the situation and working to correct it.
Democracy today is a form of advertising. You send out some pleasant image to the drones through television sets and comedy shows, and convince them they're smart to vote for it. It passes, and then you can abuse power as you choose.
France is no different. When the majority of the people are non-involved in politics except to pick the choice the TV likes, how could you expect results to turn out differently?
You cannot, using process, take low quality thinking and make it into high quality leadership. You need high quality leaders, and a politically active and morally alert portion of the population to support them, especially when they do unpopular but necessary things.
Futurist Traditionalism
Have you ever watched C-SPAN? Seems like every five minutes, they're having a Quorum Call.
Quorum calls are also used to put the meeting activity on hold for a fixed time so the members can discuss things with each other without risking having something pulled on them while their attention is diverted. (Or when somebody needs a potty break, ditto.) Think "recess" but much lighter weight.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Politicians use these procedural tricks all the time, why do you think that said tricks exist?
Among other reasons: This lets them pass unpopular legislation without taking a hit in the next election. Rather than be on record as voting for it they can just not be there and claim the designated bad guys pulled one over on the whole country. The designated bad guys are the ones who are either from districts where the legislation is popular or who are otherwise safe despite the vote. They rotate so nobody accumulates enough bad karma to get kicked out come election time.
You know the rest are in on it because, if there were enough votes against the legislation to trounce it, once the whole gang is back they COULD bring it back up and undo it (or if necessary modify the rules so they could and THEN do it). But they don't.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's not subverting the democratic process. People didn't show up to vote. That's part of the democratic process: being dependent on the dedication level of your representative. Oops.
Paying someone to show up and represent you may seem like a good idea until they don't bother showing up. Then you have a problem.
Subverting the democratic process would be ignoring quorum rules, or having a minority and favour but passing legislation regardless, or using un-constitutionally mandated powers of veto, or letting one person's vote (i.e. a President's) outweigh the majority votes of others present.
This isn't a sneaky trick (in fact it's nothing new-- US politics has a history of moments like this one too). It is merely taking advantage of the fact that certain individuals (who obviously didn't care enough about the legislation to read the agenda or make sure they were present) did not show up to work one evening to pass legislation they might have cared about - but who knows, since they didn't show up.
It's important to ensure blame goes where it is deserved. This isn't the democratic process at fault here: it's people not showing up for work. If it's stupid to have late night legislation passing meetings, then deal with that. The democratic process has lots of change mechanisms-- that's its strength. Democracy is only meaningful if people participate, so if people don't participate, don't blame democracy.
Why can't the reasonable law makers come back and just pass a rescind to this legislation?
is the whole European union
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
Do not be so quick to fault the French. Seems to me recent stories about the US Congress show new tricks to avoid obtaining a majority of 60 votes to pass legislation increasing taxes or doing budgets because it allowed the minority party a voice. Hell even if they have to abide by their own rules they found gimmicks to get around them to include having the administrative branch issue POs
Summary, in all "Democratic" countries, democracy only works until the ruling parties figured out they were immune to the wishes of the voters and rule of law.
60 votes are not required to pass the legislation; only to end debate, and then only in the Senate. The House of Representatives has no such rule. Budget Reconciliation bills, which serve to smooth out the kinks in the House and Senate versions of the annual budget, need only 51% of the membership to vote to invoke cloture (to force a floor vote). Which at the current Senate membership is 50 votes, since one Senate seat from Minnesota is still under dispute, leaving the total membership at 99.
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A polititian did something immoral.
what is this world comming to!
France is a republic. If people want a democracy (and who wouldn't?) they need to create one.
This had to happen sooner or later. We only didn't know when and where. Now, in France.
Looking forward to the rise of anonymous (pseudonymous) P2P networks. They are almost there already, but only lack sufficient user base.
I bet on GNUnet.
You all need to stop talking about the system and how it's broken with loopholes and nonsense, and start talking about what's going to be done about it.
The people need to protest, voice their opinions, and if nothing changes government officials need to be harassed and/or *killed*.
Anything less is just complacency / acceptance of a corrupt system. Governments eventually get out of hand when small abuses like this build up.
Even if you don't like the violent route, the fact of the matter is that something HAS to be done to show that the people are incredibly displeased with this action.
If nobody does, I just end up being right.
Are we supposed to know what the "3 strikes and you're out" rule is? I see no explanation of this law.
Quorum rules introduce their own problems. For instance a minority can hold back certain votes simply by failing to show up. Not voting on something at all is as good as not passing it.
So then you introduce rules that allow you to vote on certain things when there isn't a quorum in certain circumstances. Then those rules get abused to force something through that shouldn't be.
Even if you had some kind of "don't be an ass" rule, it will get abused, as somewhere it has a deterministic mechanism for evaluating whether or not a member is "being an ass" and imposing censure or sanctions. This mechanism will itself invariably be subject to scheming and manipulations.
There is a quorum at the National Assembly, but a member of the parliament has to explicitely ask it to be checked in order to enforce it. And even if it happens, the session is just aborted and takes place again another day, where you can be bloody sure that the government will demand all of his member of parliament to be present. Anyway, Sarkozy's party and its allies have an absolute majority in the assembly, and Sarkozy and his government are known to be demand an extreme loyalty and servility to members of the parliament of his party. They can pass almost any law. The opposition made plenty of sensible comments and amendment proposals, but the government mostly ignored them, so they got pissed off and stopped wasting their time. I can definitely understand those people.
Yeah a nasty trick, but completely legitimate in many democracies, just like a filibuster.
The real question is why did YOUR elected representative leave early?
If just a fraction of the 500+ who skipped out early stuck around, this wouldn't have happened.
41 hours is ridiculous, they should have shut it down, or stuck it out. To leave it open that such a law could pass is just sloppiness.
As long as they leave French Toast, French Bread, French Fries, French girls and French Kissing alone, they can do whatever they want.
Well, I'm English, and I thought I'd better stand up for our much maligned workforce, including myself, getting shown up by the French like that.
Well, I would have. But I was delayed a bit getting into work today. I was going to drive, but it's in the garage, and they're waiting for parts. Since last week. The bus turned up half-hour late, but that's OK as we were got stuck in the roadworks that mysteriously popped up yesterday, but didn't have any workmen on.
I could have worked from home, but my landline was broken by BT last week, and the engineer is a bit behind, so my internet is out of order. But then again, they've just started throttling VPNs, so it wouldn't have been great anyway.
I tried calling in on the mobile, but was out of coverage - I'm sure they'll put up some more towers round here some day.
Well, I did finally get to work, but they'd all gone down the pub for lunch, so they didn't need me anyway. Then I remembered I need to pop down into town to run some errands.
I went to the bank first, but forgot they've just closed the branch - had to make some savings after making dodgy investments apparently. I did get to the post office ok, but they only had one counter open, so I was a bit delayed in the queue.
Finally got down to the council office, but found they'd all gone on strike, some furore over pensions I think.
I would have gone back to work, but since they all knock of at 4.30, there didn't seem much point...
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
This is indeed sneaky, but if the law is sufficiently unpopular, when the other 561 members return they can repeal it. And with luck some who were not firmly opposed before will be sufficiently angry at being bypassed that they will vote to repeal.
Do they intend to send the police down on every "pirate" ? or assume that the designated owner of the incriminated owner is automatically liable ?
Arguably this is quite dubious from a practical perspective.
The same thing happened in Slovakia in October 1994. A political party (HZDS), that won the election, was unable to get a clear majority in parliament. During second session of parliament HZDS started voting about leading position of all significant offices. The session lasted 22 hours and ended in the morning. There were 86 out of 150 members of parliament present. Only 3 belonged to opposition. During that night HZDS and its allies got control of state controlled TV and radio, committee tasked with oversight of secret service, the general attorney, chairmen and deputies of Supreme Audit Office, National Property Fund etc etc. All together 38 positions. The country went into political isolation for 8 years. The event is known here as "Night of long knives" after similar event in Nazi Germany.
Obviously Mr. Sarkozy learns from history.
Actually It is not a law yet. The bill still has to be approved by the "Conseil Constitutionnel" which has the power of judicial review.
Let them eat croissant!
>"President Sarkozy has sneaked his controversial legislation through the French parliament -- and shown his contempt for the democratic process. So now what?"
Now What? Carla Bruni!
Mesdames, Messieurs - préparez le guillotine.
What else? We just start sending out trumped up charges to every ISP in France, for each one of their customers - starting with the president and the government.
It is easy to automate too! All we need is a list of French ISPs, their assigned IP ranges, and a program that sends out automatic letters for each IP address in turn.
For a long time now, these sorts of abuses have been enabled by the fact that statesmen rightfully feel safe from those that they govern. And the people are all too happy to give up things like assault rifles in order to secure public safety.
By getting on this high horse, Western democracies have basically signaled their leaders that no amount of corruption will result in any serious penalties.
What to do now? Build a shiny new guillotine in front of the parliament building. Remind the politicians what happened to their predecessors when they failed to uphold their duty to the people. And don't be afraid to use the damn thing.
Guy Fawkes had the right idea, and al-Qaida wasted an opportunity.
I don't know why some people seem so upset. So the French Right have hacked the political system and found an exploit to get their legislation passed. The Left know the rules too, they stuffed up by letting it happen.
If it was an obscure hack to calculate square roots five times faster, we would be applauding but because it's a hack about something we don't agree with, then we're upset. Hats off to them for being smart.
And I have to say neither the headline nor the linked article actually explain what this is about. For all I can tell, it is an amendment to the laws of Petanque.
> Does anyone find it amusing that after all the ridicule the French heaped on Americans for electing Bush that they went and elected somebody even worse?
Actually, the people opposed to Sarkozy in France sometimes call him the French version of Bush.
I don't know if anyone remembers, but there were quite a few protests before and after his election. I believe the one in Second Life was even reported on Slashdot.
The sad thing is that others have pointed out both that French law requires a quorum if requested and that one was requested at the start of this. So it may well be directly illegal to have done this.
I don't think that will stop them, but it would be lovely if it were challenged and defeated in court on that basis.
make the French connection... Does it have to be "the US Connection"? lol....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
My guess, and knowing the French and the northern suburbs of Paris, is that there will be riots because of this and the law will be striken. The French, unlike citizen of countries who shall remain anonymous, actually protest instead of sitting in their couches watching their lives (or reality shows) go by. SHAME ON YOU PAL!
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...repeal the law next session if they don't want it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_of_France
It's darknet time. Also, DDoS the government with false claims of copyright infringement to get as many people banned from the internet as possible.
A French Revolution?
'Trick Used To Pass French "Three Strikes"'
Sounds like you are talking about a trick used to avoid failing a language class!
What happened isn't exclusive to France. Similar shenanigans are employed in other countries as well. Aside from that, the EU has just declared it's official opposition against 3-strikes measures, but Sarko doesn't care.
Although I have no particular liking for HADOPI, there are several things that are needed to know about French law making process:
- On the regular case, law texts are examined alternatively by the upper chamber (senate) and the lower chamber (national assembly) until they are voted by both chambers in identical terms. In case of long standing disagreements between the chambers, a working commission composed of 14 people coming from both chambers are asked to find a compromise. The results of their work must then be voted in both chambers (without possibility of modifications) before the law is passed.
- On specific cases, the government may ask for a quick examination of a law: there is only one examination in the senate and the national assembly. The working commission is then summoned (because it is very unlikely at this point that both chambers will have adopted the same text). Both chambers are still required to vote on the results of the work of the commission. Currently, HADOPI is precisely in this state: examined and modified by both chambers, about to be worked on by the commission. Now, you have to understand that on the "quick" path, this working commission (Commission Mixte Paritaire by its full name) holds the real power of lawmaking.
Now, let's talk about the "trick". It would be quite surprising to perform such a sneaky trick without enraging the opposing political groups (which were heavily against HADOPI) - but hardly anything was heard from them. This is because it is the way the National Assembly is working. During votes in the lower chamber, the political groups are often (always) represented by subsets of the elected lawmakers. The lawmakers can't study every text.
During the debate, in which modifications of the laws are performed, the different elected lawmakers have a bit of independence. Depending on the relative number of lawmakers present, sometimes "sneaky" modifications of the law text are performed - modifications that wouldn't have taken place if the full assembly was present.
During the final vote (is the modified text adopted or not?), every lawmaker always votes according to the instructions of their respective political group. There are sometimes a black sheep or two who will not conform to the orders - they are usually shown on TV, called traitors by various people, and then punished by their political party. So, there is never any surprise during the final votes, as long as the full assembly is roughly represented by the lawmakers present at the time of the vote. Which was the case at the time the HADOPI law was voted.
Of course, what was written in this rather long text is only my understanding of the French lawmaking process. I am sure that experts in the matter will be able to point out the inaccuracies of what I said, but I hope it will give you a better general understanding of the situation.
This is a shame but the French government was dead set on passing this law so this is merely accelerating things by a few days.
At any rate all the technical experts said the law was inapplicable and too restricted. It only concerns P2P networks exchanges, dealing with French works shared on French soil, i.e. for which French law has jurisdiction. A wider law would have required European collaboration, however the European parliament has repeatedly voted against any kind of repressive Internet policy.
As it is, this law can easily be circumvented by using VPNs (e.g. the pirate bay one) or using other means of sharing which are not covered by this law.
A probably unintended side effect of this law is that French consumers will probably now turn even more than before to safe, non-French works, i.e. subtitled American, British or German TV drama, films and music to the detriment of the French entertainment industry.
The French entertainment industry will also probably face a boycott of some sort. Serves them right, if you ask me. Consumers are sheep only to a degree, as we have seem in the RIAA cases.
In this instance the French entertainment industry, like the RIAA, think they are entitled to continuing revenues no matter what. They haven't yet learned that suing or harassing one's public is a really bad idea. I think they will change their tune in a few year's time.