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French Assembly Adopts 3-Strikes Bill
An anonymous reader writes "After lots of turmoil, including a surprise rejection and a European amendment against it, Sarkozy's 3 strikes law has just been passed by the French Assembly [in French]: 'The first warning mails ... should be sent in the coming fall. In case of second offenders, the first disconnections should start beginning 2010.'"
We all know it wasn't decided on merit.
How long until offenders start using the easily accessible encryption to avoid losing their connections? This will effectively make it harder for rights holders who have legitimate claims to go after offenders.
Whenever you pull the pendulum in one direction, it always swings back in the other one.
I hope the Internet era will put a stop to this type of politicans.
I can't wait to see how this thing blows in his face.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
With more and more gov services being available on the internet, does that mean that those disconnected won't be able to use said services?
After months of bullying and sneakiness, he finally got it through, and well done.
But I won't feel much sympathy when the cut-off peasants storm his gates holding pitchforks, hot pokers and rope.
Don't you just wish that polititions were subject to three strikes too? Get caught three times in a lie, or claiming invalid expenses, or outright graft, and you get a life time ban on holding any political office ( or lobbying ), don't pass go, don't collect any of your pensions, just get the f*ck out of here.
So is this France's rejection of EU sovereignty in these matters?
And if so, will consequences might France experience for rejecting an EU ruling?
We've built a network designed to share information across vast distances very cheaply. This is a very good thing.
Being able to share your movies with people across a continent the same way you would in your living room is a feature.
Allowing people to share books with one another and learn from them is a feature.
Letting people remix content from artists and share it with the world is a feature.
Telling people they cannot speak, read, listen or watch because they're part of the future and not part of the past is a bug.
I should imagine that some French Government organization will be caught downloading allegedly illegal content. Then, of course, the government will have to follow the letter of the law and cut off its own Internet Service. That should be fun to watch. Or, someone will get fired, internet service will not be suspended and they will reference Nixon's famous quote, about if they do it its not illegal, or they will reference Bush, who followed Nixon's fine example of little emperorism.
It has only passed the lower chamber. Now it has to be approved by the Senate with the exact same wording. In case a coma is changed, the assembly will have to debate, edit and vote again the law. Then it will have the pass the check of the constitutional council which could take down large chunks of the law. In other words, the battle is not over yet and the relief could come from Europe. Wait, fight, and see.
I didn't RTFA.
Is there a dispute resolution mechanism if I happen to be a Frenchman who's been falsely accused three times (I'm not French, and I haven't been accused of filesharing, I'm just curious).
You could take it to the courts, but AFAIK there's no built-in tribunal for disputes. You might have trouble once you're there, since the law gives authority to cut your connection after three accusations by the industry, not three proven cases of infringement. If, for instance, you were to write publicly about the issue in a critical tone, the industry could say, "I don't like you" three times fast and you'd be disconnected with no clear means of recourse. They don't even have to tell you you've been accused - the warning notes are optional.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
How about a little context with my stuff that matters?
Suddenly the entire editorial staff burst out in a fit of riotous laughter.
So what would happen if someone used a bot net to get half of France banned from the internet.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Which country has incarcerated the largest fraction of its population?
Sadly, unless you're part of the cartel of industry organizations which bought and paid for this "legislation" - your complaints will be ignored.
It's not the words on the paper that define the law.
It's the money that paid for them.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
The french presidential majority, you mean. Don't mistake the french with their politicians, or we could all think you're clones of G.W. Bush :)
The major problem of the 3-strike law is that it's a read-guard action that does essentially nothing (at worst) and completely ignores economic forces (at best).
30 years ago, in 1979, if I wanted to get a permanent copy of some content - say, a novel -, I would have to purchase a bunch of paper, some inks, find the appropriate tools (thank god, Xerox already existed), spend a couple hours preparing stuff, and would end with my copy of the novel. At the same time, a professional content copier - which I would call, say, a printer - would purchase paper at a discount compared to me, inks the same, have the tools ready for use, spend 1/1000th of the time I did per copy. Requiring the services of a professional content duplicator to make my copy of some content made economical sense.
Today, making a copy of some content involves about a milliwatt or so of electricity, a tool I already have, and 5s of my index or middle finger to do copy/paste. Using a professional content duplicator to make a copy of some content is an economically non-viable proposition, no matter how you turn around things. You cannot justify charging 15$ to make a DVD copy of a movie when I can make the same copy, at the same quality level, for one cent. And when I purchase your DVD, from my point of view, I am paying somebody 15$ for making a copy for me. That's good, if your DVD is a luxury item. But for a common economy good? Not working.
The profession of content duplicator is dead. Or dying. Like any profession that is no longer economically justified, it will go, like the hordes of people who slaved at hand looms to make cloths when Mr. Jacquart came with his automatic looms. They yelled, they ranted, they ran into the streets (hmmm, how many popular showings of movie industry people have we seen in the streets so far?). And in the end, they went, for no one would pay triple or worse prices for the same product.
The entire content industry is running in circles because, for good or worse, they all have hitched their cart to the profession of content duplicator. We still need people to create content (we call them artists). We still need businesses to find "good" content creators from the masses and advertise this content (we call them editors). We still need businesses to take the raw content, polish it, make sure it's well done (we call them producers). We even need business to deliver that content to us (we used to call them retail chains). What we no longer need is content duplicators. However, the whole content industry has decided (well, evolved) around the content duplicator. Why else are artists paid by the copy, if not because they use the content duplicator as the driver of their revenue. Everyone else in the industry does. Steve Jobs knew it when he was asked if he favored Blu-ray or HD-DVD: he said it didn't matter, because the idea of making expensive copies of content was already dying.
With that profession dying, they need to find out new methods of doing those services, and get paid. One segment of the content industry has already found it: the distributors. The guys who are delivering the content to the consumers are already there; they're called ISPs, and they charge people for the delivery of content - any content - and they're happy. They don't care if the content is subcription-based TV, iTunes songs, web pages, or BitTorrent P2P streams. They have found out the new business model of content delivery, and they're ready for the 21st century. The rest of the content profession still hasn't figured out, or, in the case of the old delivery channels will be dead. As usual when business models change, most of the old business go titsup and new business appear instead - only rarely will an existing business figure out it needs changing, figure out how it will change, and do it.
And when they have figured out how to live without the content duplicators, then HADOPI will become like all those laws that require you to keep your riding crop in hand when crossing another vehicle: something that's completely irrelevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prisoner_population_rate_UN_HDR_2007_2008.PNG
Australia?
Encryption cannot solve this problem. For filesharing to work, peers who have data must somehow advertise this fact. It doesn't matter if that data is encrypted; you still know what it is and who has it.
There are only two things filesharers can do:
1. Try to restrict the people that they advertise to so that they are not caught by the authorities. Here, there are conflicting goals: In order to have lots of data available, you want the largest network possible. But in order to keep things secure, you need as few people in on it as possible. So the more pressure the copyright groups put on the networks, the more the equilibrium shifts towards smaller (and less valuable) networks.
2. Give data to intermediaries who pass it on. Either this is done with something like onion routing, or sites like rapidshare are used as the intermediaries. This relies on being able to trust the intermediaries to whom you are adjacent. There also must be some incentive for the intermediaries to pass on your data. In the case of onion routing, the incentive is that other people's traffic serves as "noise" which your own traffic can "hide" in. In the case of Rapidshare et al, it's simply cash, through a combination of paid memberships and advertising revenue.
Neither #1 nor #2 are encryption, really, though #2 may involve some.
A physical DVD, including packaging, is close to $1.50. Now, you can copy a DVD, but can you produce the movie that is on that DVD? No, I didn't think so. Arguing that the only thing of value involved in DVD production is the physical medium is asinine.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
An element of Hadopi which hasn't received much or enough attention as yet, is a section which specifies steps that can be taken by computer users to ensure that they will not be found liable under the new regime. The following is a rough translation of the relevant sections, taken from the text of the law in its current state, as found here. Bear with me, it is torturous, some explanatory notes are added in bold...
Art. L. 331-30. â" After consultation with those developing security systems designed to prevent the illicit use of access to a communication service to the public online (internet!), or electronic communications, people whose business it to offer access to such a service (ISPs) as well as those companies governed by title 2 of the book (Intellectual Property Code) and rightsholders organizations (ie SACEM etc), the High Authority will make public the pertinent functional specifications that these measures must comprise so as to be considered, in its eyes, as valid exoneration of the responsibility of the access subscriber (internet user!) as defined in article L. 336-3.
At the end of a certified evaluation procedure, and taking into consideration conformity with the specifications set out in the previous paragraph and their effectiveness, the High Authority will issue a list certifying the security software whose use will validly exonerate the access holder (internet user!) from their responsibility under the terms of article L. 336-3. This certification will be periodically revised.
Mmmh. So what the law intends is to set up a meeting between consultation with security software vendors, antipiracy organizations and ISPs to decide what software you need to install on your machine, so that they can be sure that you behave yourself. If you don't fancy installing their device, then you'll just have to swallow any liability consequent to someone else using your machine or accessing your connection.
Art. L. 336-3. â" The access holder to an online service of communication to the public (internet!) or electronic communications is obliged to ensure that thus access is not used for purposes of reproduction, display, making available, or communication to the public, of works protected by copyright or a neighboring right, without the authorisation of the holders of those rights set out in books 1 and 2 (of the Intellectual Property Code), where required.
Failure to satisfy the obligation set out in the preceding paragraph can result in a punishment according to the conditions defined by article L. 331-25.
No sanction can be taken regarding the access holder in the following cases:
1. If the access holder (internet user!) installed on of the security systems appearing on the list mentioned in the second paragraph of article L. 331-30;
2. If the attack on the rights set out in the first paragraph of the present article is the work of a person who has fraudulently used the access to the online communication service;
3. In case of force majeure.
The failure of the access holder to the obligation defined in the first paragraph will not have the effect of imposing criminal liability.
Apart from finding the last paragraph a bit puzzling â" the list of exceptions exempts from all liability, the coda refers only to criminal liability â" and the language atrocious, it's obvious the whole framework is mad and unacceptable. Imposing such strict liability unless users agree to install spyware, almost certainly connected to remote databases, is intrusive as well as dangerous.
How can this not amount to a wholesale surveillance of online activity? Who will have access to the data collected and transmitted by these 'security systems' (sic), and how will that access be managed? Will the security systems be transp