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French "3 Strikes" Law Returns, In Slightly Altered Form

Posted by timothy on from the more-where-that-came-from dept.

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "The French Senate has once again approved a reworked version of the country's controversial 'three strikes' bill designed to appease the Constitutional Council. Instead of a state-appointed agency cutting off those accused of being repeat offenders, judges will have the final say over punishment. The approval comes exactly one month after the country's Constitutional Council ripped apart the previous version of the Création et Internet law. ... Not content to let the idea die, President Nicolas Sarkozy's administration reworked the law in hopes of making it amenable to the Council — instead of HADOPI deciding on its own to cut off users on the third strike, it will now report offenders to the courts. A judge can then choose to ban the user from the Internet, fine him or her 300,000 (according to the AFP), or hand over a two-year prison sentence."

5 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Could be worse by Again · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At least now it requires a judge to declare guilt. This takes the responsibility away from the ISPs which is also a good thing.

  2. The court gets all of 3 options, right? by vandy1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It sounds to me like saying that the defendant doesn't have the option of defending the charge might get it torn up, but I know nothing up French law... I know remarkably little about US law, either, since IANAL.

    Since there is no article linked in the summary, how long before someone links one in?

    Cheers

  3. Two years prison time. Lovely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm wondering if the gambit is being done of pressing for Draconian lesligation repeatedly, so something that is "moderate" ends up getting passed like how the DMCA got passed (original bills would lock someone up for 20 years if they possessed "cracking tools" like a debugger or the strings command). First, it was three strikes, now prison time. France doesn't have the percentage of population the US does that is locked up, but all this would do is put non violent people in prison, and remove potential tax revenue (people in prison are not earning taxable income, especially for something that is a white coller issue).

  4. A war of attrition... by syncrotic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every time you think you've defeated a bad law, it just comes back in time for the next legislative cycle. Politicians and the interests that control them are patient and persistent, while regular people can only take so much time and energy from their lives to fight these causes. Especially today, when five or six examples of gross injustice come across your average news feed every single day.

    And thus corruption and greed prevail; this is how we can all belong to something that nobody wants any part of.

  5. 3 strikes law for unpassed laws by youn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if they shouldnt work on a 3 strikes law for the executive office where every time they resend the same law for vote, they have a gradual disconnection of powers to prevent abuse... that way way we'd do away with frivolous passing of laws, wasting tons of debate time in the parliament, where the whole country's legislative body is mobilized just so that a bunch of crying failing record industry stop crying wolf... especially when their apetite is not helping creativity (the original goal of copyright) because authors will continue to publish whatever the laws... and they stop increasing penalties for hypothetical loss of revenues when taxes already exist on empty media... if nothing is done, it'll be more easy to get away with murder than to download a song.

    Seriously something is wrong with the system. Maybe the anti trust laws should be ammended to prevent continuous abuse from record labels on systems worldwide. Among deceptive practices that should be punished..
    1) rootkits
    2) region locking ... damn it if I buy a cd, I should be able to play it any way I want
    3) RIAA trials - justice system flooding, racketeering like practices, deception, borderline illegal detective work , manipulation of laws, waste of public/ defendant ressource, unfair trials ....
    4) Law keeps changing, increasingly detrimental to consumers
    5) Copyright laws keep getting extended... the original idea of 10 years was good... but damn it, life + 70... wtf? if someone makes a hit which derives continuous profit 50 years after... they have no incentive to keep creating. ....

    --
    Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p