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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.
Hungarian law requires half of all MP's to be present to make any vote legit. I imagine it would have helped here.
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 you think the US, or any other country for that matter, doesn't have such loopholes riddling their system, you're delusional.
Actually most countries do not have this loophole. You have to have a quorum in order for the vote to count.
heh - understatement of the year... in America, for instance, where the elected President can issue National Security directives that are instantly law, only need to be viewed by 12 people (or less - the attendees of the National Security Council, whose members are mostly picked by the President), and bypass Congress completely. Clinton and Bush were huge fans of bypassing Congress that way (FEMA powers, warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, torture in foreign countries, etc) but the ramp-up of using this method really started with the Carter administration in the 1970s (and the best known abuse of this power was the Iran-Contra affair under Reagan). The US President can also issue normal Executive Orders, which just bypass Congress and are instantly law, but are public and can be viewed and removed by Congress or a judge.
If only we could force them to at least be reviewed by 16 people and public knowledge, like in France...
Translated excerpt of French assembly voting rules (emphasis is mine):
3. - Quorum
According to a principle reiterated by its Republican Regulations "the Assembly is always in force to deliberate and settle its agenda". The votes are valid regardless of the number of members present unless a group chairman calls for quorum before the opening of the ballot.
The quorum refers to the presence inside the National Assembly by an absolute majority of deputies (based on the number of seats actually filled).
When a vote may not take place due to lack of quorum, the session is adjourned and the vote postponed for at least an hour. The vote is consequently valid whatever the number of deputies present.
Also, from the linked article (dammit, accentuation removed, won't they ever learn UTF-8 ?) :
Apres 41 heures et 40 minutes d'une discussion passionnee sur le texte, il ne restait qu'une poignee de courageux deputes autour de 22H45 jeudi soir lorsque l'Assemblee Nationale a decide [...] de passer immediatement au vote de la loi Creation et Internet, qui n'etait pas attendu avant la semaine prochaine.
The vote was called 41 hours and 40 minutes after the start of the session, at 10:45 pm, and the vote wasn't expected that day; no wonder only a few deputies were remaining.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Yeah! And shame on you, you illiterate clod who can't even read a French article to understand that they debated this issue for over 40 hours, were under the understanding that debate of the issue was over and would be voted on first thing next week, and the fact that the Secretary of State instructed those left at 10:45 AT NIGHT to immediately vote on the issue knowing that the majority has already gone home.
YOU should be ashamed for leaving YOUR work when it's not done yet although you've been in your cubicle for two days straight and it's almost midnight. Shame on you when your own work is not even done!
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.
Executive orders are not laws. It is in the name; they are orders!
If they contradict the law, they are no different from an illegal order from your private boss, and the dilemma is the same.
If they don't contradict the law, they are no different from an other legal order from a private boss, and just have to be followed by his employees.