In France, Hadopi Reporting Begins, With (Only) 10,000 IP Addresses Per Day

mykos writes with an excerpt from TorrentFreak that says the automated enforcement of France's three-strikes law known as Hadopi is now coming into effect: "The scope of the operation is mind boggling. The copyright holders will start relatively 'slowly' with 10,000 IP-addresses a day, but within weeks this number is expected to go up to 150,000 IP-addresses per day according to official reports. The Internet providers will be tasked with identifying the alleged infringers' names, addresses, emails and phone numbers. If they fail to do so within 8 days they risk a fine of 1,500 euros per day for every unidentified IP-address. To put this into perspective, a United States judge ruled recently that the ISP Time Warner only has to give up 28 IP-addresses a month (1 per day) to copyright holders because of the immense workload the identifications would cause."

Comments

Carte blanche

[fastest fascist]

So basically copyright holders in France have free reign to find out who any IP address belonged to. With such volumes of request, there's no way their validity will be questioned in any way. Likely the whole system will soon be automated.

Re:Carte blanche

[Pikoro]

In order to fix this, or at least slow it down, the copyright holders should have to pay a fixed amount per IP to offset the cost of the request for the ISP. Let's see them request 150,000 IPs per day when it cost 100 Euros per IP.

Re:Carte blanche

[Thanshin]

Well, at least they started in France.

You may think otherwise but fucking with the general public in France is not a good idea. First cars start to combust spontaneously. Then it's buildings. Before you have time to react, people are having their head separated from the rest of their body.

Re:Carte blanche

[Joce640k]

If they've automated the process* then you can bet a lot of 'secret' requests will be made, too. Who's visiting which websites? Who's on the other end of an instant messenger? Who's reading which tweets?

[*] Let's face it, it's not going to be clerks reading printouts...

Re:Carte blanche

[TheRaven64]

I, for one, vote for Citizen Robespierre as government liaison to the RIAA.

Re:Carte blanche

[captainpanic]

Well, at least they started in France.

You may think otherwise but fucking with the general public in France is not a good idea. First cars start to combust spontaneously. Then it's buildings. Before you have time to react, people are having their head separated from the rest of their body.

Partially true.
But it's the unions which are strong and actually accomplish something. The unions organize the enormous strikes to protect the rights of the workers.

Those riots where cars get burned are no more than a national sport. They do not accomplish much (some awareness of problems at best). The real French revolution was 221 years ago.

The future will be the most interesting. A kid downloads illegal content... and daddy the freelance software engineer gets shut down. That would be one of the first lawsuits. And I seriously doubt that it will come to riots and strikes. More likely that people will find a technical workaround.

Re:Carte blanche

[Elektroschock]

ACTA is bringing that to the rest of the World. One Camembert to rule them all.

Re:Carte blanche

[John Hasler]

No, no, no. That could never happen in Europe. European governments have infinite respect for privacy.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there anything requiring the ISP's to provide the data in machine readable format? Could they collect the info automatically and then export it to something like a low res JPG file before they submit it to the copyright holders? If so that would be an effective way to drive up their costs and 'throttle' the system

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least they started in France.

You may think otherwise but fucking with the general public in France is not a good idea. First cars start to combust spontaneously. Then it's buildings. Before you have time to react, people are having their head separated from the rest of their body.

Only when you antagonize "youths" of some indeterminate heritage...

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to fix this, or at least slow it down, the copyright holders should have to pay a fixed amount per IP to offset the cost of the request for the ISP. Let's see them request 150,000 IPs per day when it cost 100 Euros per IP.

That's what some of the ISP are asking for, that the government or the copyright holders compensate them for the cost of the identifications. They only got back a big fat "no way" so far. So, currently, ISP have to comply under 8 days, at their own cost, or pay a fine.

Likely the whole system will soon be automated

Yeah, well, no. The law is so well conceived that it does not specify under which form the ISP have to provide the copyright infringers identification details. So one of them, in a playful manner, sent the first batch of identification details through the mail, on some printed sheets of paper. Good luck to try automating that. :)

Re:Carte blanche

[fastest fascist]

I like your idea, though I prefer an automated telephone system for this. "Please enter your request ID now." With one phone line to cater to all copyright owners, of course.

Re:Carte blanche

[ArsenneLupin]

How difficult is it to find out the home addresses of politicians? And, if it's 150000 different IP addresses, does it have to be that many different postal addresses as well?

Re:Carte blanche

[jedidiah]

Ruin enough people's lives and you will have lots of the wrong sort of people mad at you.

This is how real revolutions begin.

Re:Carte blanche

[Robert Zenz]

Actually, most of the european governments would like to see more and stricter privacy laws (I'm not talking UK here, they're an island). The problem is in this case that the EU-Central-Government seems pretty hard influenced by lobbies of all kind. Additionally there are negotiations behind closed doors with the industry about this.

I'm not saying that the EU is something bad, hell no, I think it's the first step into the right direction. But we really should drag industry-lobbies out of the parliament and shot them in the streets.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

they should send it in the mail in braille, printed in semaphore, or in written Morse Code/

Re:Carte blanche

[schwit1]

"I like your idea, though I prefer an automated telephone system for this. "Please enter your request ID now." With one phone line to cater to all copyright owners, of course."

and send the results via snail mail ... postage due.

Re:Carte blanche

[Pikoro]

One would think ROT-13'd braille would be sufficient.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

No, things are not as they used to be... Now the French are sheeple, just like you guys. I know, I'm French, I don't burn cars ;-).

Re:Carte blanche

[TarMil]

Not really. There's general public and general public. And clearly, those who burn cars during protests -- actually, those who protest at all -- are not those who know the dangerousness of such laws. We won't see anyone in the streets to protest against Hadopi anytime soon.

Re:Carte blanche

[AHuxley]

"Likely the whole system will soon be automated."
Australia is dreaming of that too. Show ID to get an ISP account, a fed or state task force clicks on any Australian ip and the data links back in real time.
".... the AFP [Australian Federal Police] told the briefing that it wanted to automate the process of requesting and obtaining access to telecommunications data."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/inside-australia-s-data-retention-proposal-339303862.htm
France may want the same instant system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon in the courts :)

Re:Carte blanche

[AwaxSlashdot]

So basically copyright holders in France have free reign to find out who any IP address belonged to.

Technically, copyright holders don't know who the IP belongs to. They provide a list of IP to HADOPI, a state run service. HADOPI request the IDs and execute the 3 strikes process (e-mail, snail-mail, disconnection).

With such volumes of request, there's no way their validity will be questioned in any way.

Everything have been crafted that way. There are application notes from the gov discouraging the justice to run additional investigation and proceed to the disconnection solely from the "proofs" provided by copyright holders.

Likely the whole system will soon be automated.

Currently, there is one little glitch : the connection between ISP and HADOPI has not been formally defined. Gov does not want to draft it because the ISP will have the right to define the fees they'll ask to process this id request.

So one ISP sent back the identification printed on paper since the format the id should be sent is not specifically defined.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's the first step into the right direction. But we really should drag industry-lobbies out of the parliament and shot them in the streets.

Or, actually shoot them down *in* the Parliament, *then* drag them out onto the streets... ;-)

Re:Carte blanche

[FriendlyLurker]

So one of them, in a playful manner, sent the first batch of identification details through the mail, on some printed sheets of paper. Good luck to try automating that. :)

They should also print them out as CAPTCHAS - to discourage automated OCR scanning. If all French ISP's did this then the workload for 150K IP's a day would land squarely back on the shoulders of the copyright holders doing blanket requests.

Re:Carte blanche

[captainpanic]

Innocent until proven guilty - that still stands... but governments are really trying hard to prove that we're guilty of something.

And surprise, surprise, if you look hard enough, almost everybody is guilty of something.

If such a large group of people are misbehaving, maybe there's something wrong with the laws, rather than with the people...

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, we wish it were still the case.

Re:Carte blanche

[thijsh]

Yes, carte blanche indeed... they can basically brute force all French citizens IPs to trace everyone. According to this article France has 13.5 million households with internet. When they request the details of the IPs of 150.000 of those each month it will take 7,5 years to get the details of *all* households in France. Since the article is from 2008 they probably have a higher level of households with internet now, extrapolating increase from 2008 that would be just under 10 years to let them get the details of everyone. After that they only have to keep up with new broadband connections and people that move...

I expect that in roughly 5 years half of France will be without an internet connection (they will of course request actual torrenting IPs first, before going after the rest anyway).

And who wants to bet that they will create a new law in around 10 years that limits the amount of requests they can send 'for community privacy concerns' but simultaneously requires ISPs to notify the media companies when someone moves... The French better start protesting right now to make it real hard on the lobbyists to hold that new law back for 10 years.

Re:Carte blanche

[darthflo]

Oh come on, people, please. Have a bit of imagination. Telephone systems and printed CAPTCHAS? This is the precise situation interpretive dance was invented for. Also, since this is France: mimes!

Re:Carte blanche

[John Hasler]

Actually, most of the european governments would like to see more and stricter privacy laws...

Which they themselves would, of course, scrupulously obey. No democratic government would ever spy on its own citizens. That would violate "human rights" and no politican would ever do that. Unless, of course, it is for your own good. And the government always knows what is best for you, so it's ok.

Re:Carte blanche

[kangsterizer]

and the ISP in question is FREE.FR
I think it's worth mentioning their name as they regularly stand out to defend such causes. The competition is mostly owned by music/media lobbies therefore they mostly do what they're told.

It goes further. The person from the government who was first in charge of HADOPI has been forced into the biggest French ISP administration (Orange/France Telecom - a previously state owned company), to make them, sorry, force them to accept and play nice with HADOPI.

That's how far the corruption goes. Note that this person thinks OpenOffice is a firewall solution, just as a funny bonus.

Re:Carte blanche

[Krneki]

Hey hey, slow down Johnny boy.
This is not how democracy works. The big corporations, using corrupted politicians, create new laws that will never ever benefit the working class. Now in return the working class has to pay through taxes or higher internet fees all the new expenses that comes with this new type of regulation.

And while the ISP is working his ass of to respect the new laws, a couple more legislation comes in order to track more user activities online, after all they are already monitoring what we are doing and if we didn't give a fuck the first time, why should we care later?

P.S: Have a nice day.

Re:Carte blanche

[Yvanhoe]

Hehe, first wait for the HADOPI to come from its DDOS attack today. It should have sent 800 addresses today, but it is "delayed" (the first warning emails should have been sent a few months ago but still nothing is coming).

Also, here is a funny fact : the law compels ISPs to give identities of some IP holders but doesn' specify how. One of the most popular ISP, Free Telecom, sent them a paper listing (they are vocal opponents to this law). Good luck managing that when they reach 150 000 a day.

Re:Carte blanche

[daem0n1x]

You forgot the flying pavés. Ever been in a French city? Don't you find it strange that the sidewalks are tarred? It all started in May 68.

Re:Carte blanche

[sckeener]

Ruin enough people's lives and you will have lots of the wrong sort of people mad at you. This is how real revolutions begin.

Depends on how slowly it happens. If it happens slowly enough the next generation just assumes this is the way it is. The drug war has ruined tons of people's lives and we have neither won the war nor declared it legal.

Re:Carte blanche

[mlts]

What happens in France with this bill will echo throughout the world. If it is successful, politicians in the US and UK will follow suit and start allowing entities who have no law enforcement duties to be able to demand millions of names daily from ISPs.

Of course, a conviction in a criminal case or a finding of guilt in a civil case would be a rubber stamp by a judge -- Plaintiff says "ISP said this is who it is, this evidence cannot be faked" Judge drops the gavel and moves to the next case.

Then we will find that abuses have started happening. Advertisers would have been using the mechanism to pull RL names of people who visit their websites so they can sell that information.

We will then start to see law firms performing one lawsuit (because it is easy to try) with 50,000+ defendants (think the Hurt Locker legal wrangling.) This will become commonplace as precedent sets in showing that a name popping up on the IP list is an automatic guilt finding.

Blowback? Anonymous VPN services will start to become a lot more popular when Joe Sixpack sees his friend Jim Riverhead get hounded by bill collectors daily for a multimillion judgement for downloading an album.

Re:Carte blanche

[KarrdeSW]

There's actually just a request booth sitting outside each ISP's headquarters. You walk in, shut the door behind you, and are greeted with an old moldy SPAM can dangling from a string.

Re:Carte blanche

[CurseOfTheVampire]

Innocent until proven guilty - that still stands... but governments are really trying hard to prove that we're guilty of something.

Is that true under Napoleonic Law? I always thought that in France it was "guilty until proven innocent".

Re:Carte blanche

[gizmonic]

So one ISP sent back the identification printed on paper since the format the id should be sent is not specifically defined.

Ha ha! That is awesome. Only thing better woulda been to send it back in braille or morse code or even better, on punch cards. :)

Re:Carte blanche

[daem0n1x]

I just hope the ISPs will grant the fascist copiright holders the same amount of competence, effort and dedication they devote to their paying costumers.

Re:Carte blanche

[daem0n1x]

I see an alternative Internet made of thousands of rogue connections being laid out in France and the other countries who will align on this idiocy.

Re:Carte blanche

[DrSkwid]

But the govt. *already* knows where you live.

Re:Carte blanche

[Fross]

Obviously you are unfamiliar with what the french did to wheel clampers.

Re:Carte blanche

[musicalmicah]

To quote Kinsey, "Everybody's sin is nobody's sin, and everybody's crime is no crime at all."

Re:Carte blanche

[geogob]

Here's another idea. One IP per sheet (High density paper of course), 150000 IP per day... shipped COD. I wonder how the french equivalent of the RIAA or MPAA will feel when they have to pay for the shipping of 1 ton of paper a day... yet alone what they will do with 1 ton of paper a day.

Re:Carte blanche

[dmayle]

Obviously spoken by someone who doesn't really know that much about France.

I lived for six years in France, and there is one main difference in politics between the French and Americans. When we talk about the government, we use the pronoun 'they': they can't do this, if they raise taxes, etc. For the the French, the government is 'we'. (Cue bad French jokes). I don't know why we do it [some stupid policy]. We need to do something about retirement ages.

It seems small, and so you might discount it, but this little difference is key to understanding the French. They are disgusted when voter turnout was an amazingly low (for them) 88% in the last election. We as Americans are happy if we get 50%. They've rewritten their constitution five times because they felt the situation had changed and it needed to be updated.

And as to the riots just being a national sport, that's not true. In 2006, the conservative right wing government tried to introduce a special employment contract that discriminated against the young. (Values of the French republic: Liberty. Equality. Brotherhood.) The youth held strikes, and rioted. They barricaded schools, held rallys, etc. A month later the discriminatory contract was removed from law.

As a nation, we haven't had that much national will since the civil rights movement. (Unless you count the national racism that whipped us into a fervor to support George Bush and his plans in Afghanistan^H^H^H Iraq.)

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

Question:

Why does it cost money for ISPs to locate IP addresses? That info is directly inside their databases, within easy access, and they certainly have no problem locating me when they send the monthly bill. Tying an IP to a home should be just as easy.
.

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

>>>The big corporations, using corrupted politicians, create new laws.....

And yet just last night I had someone telling me corporations should have the same rights as People (including the right to vote I guess?). People can be so dumb. Corporations should have NO rights whatsoever. This government is the PEOPLE's government not the government for inaimate buildings/things.
.

Re:Carte blanche

[MacGyver2210]

With "lobbies of all kind" being read as "huge amounts of free cash", of course.

Re:Carte blanche

[TarMil]

Is that true under Napoleonic Law? I always thought that in France it was "guilty until proven innocent".

Thank God you've always thought wrong. What kind of democracy would that be... Oh, wait. The one we're starting to be thanks to Hadopi and likes.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Does it matter? France is signed up to the ECHR, which requires them to operate on the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they found it was a lot easier to have consumers and tax payers pay for all that. And I bet buying out lawmakers didn't even cost them very much.

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

Robespierre? I'd rather have someone with a gun. Like one of those French Army sharpshooters taking aim at the RIAA CEO's head.

Re:Carte blanche

[nabsltd]

One of the most popular ISP, Free Telecom, sent them a paper listing (they are vocal opponents to this law).

Hopefully, the personal details were printed in 6-point type.

Re:Carte blanche

[thijsh]

Yeah, but they generally don't go around suing for (illegal) bullshit reasons, and I would not suspect them of selling a list of addresses linked to IPs to the highest bidder... With these big media I'm not sure of anything they'll do anymore, as long as it makes them money it will happen at some time, and they have proven that extortion is their game now... It's an easy cash-cow, all the government has to do is look the other way and take bribes, uhhh campaign contributions, from lobbyists.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Please elaborate in exquisite detail...

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

A lot of this could be fixed by simply striking the part of the US Constitution that gives Congress the power to grant 100+ year copyrights. I assume the French constitution has a similar clause that could be struck.

No copyright == no more power for corporate Masters to treat citizens like Serfs needing a whipping.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...

Funny.

Last I checked Corporations were run, maintained, and full of...*people*.

So what? Just because you choose to go into business to try and achieve "the dream" of independence from bosses..you suddenly *lose* all of your rights?

Hell, IMO, corporations should have exactly the same rights as "people"...and the same restrictions that go along with it. Been caught stealing? Slammer-time. Product kills someone? Slammer-time.

Watch product safety and internal corporate oversight skyrocket...

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

That doesn't mean young people accept it.

I know a lot of young persons who are anti-Drug War. They think you should be able to put anything into your OWN body that you desire, because you're harming no one but yourself (unless you're DUI of course). If you are not free to use your body however you wish, then you are not a free person - you are a Serf to the Congressional Masters.

Plus the simple fact the Drug War, banning naturally-growing plants given to us by Nature, is unconstitutional. It violates our 9th and 10th amendment rights.

Re:Carte blanche

[psycho12345]

First you have to pay someone to divert from their usual tasks to do this, or given the volume, you would need to hire a brand new person to do the lookups, possible more. 2nd the manager or some person delegated by said manager would have to sign off on them, as well as have the legal dept. sign as well. Even if its a total rubber stamp, it will still take people's time, which equals money.

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

>>>a conviction in a criminal case or a finding of guilt in a civil case would be a rubber stamp by a judge

In the US and UK we have jury nullifcation. Basically: They refuse to enforce unjust laws, and insist the citizen by let go because he has committed no crime. Do they not have the same power in France?

Re:Carte blanche

[geek2k5]

Maybe they should print the identification details on neon blue paper with cyan ink.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical American response. It's not about the size of the weapon that matters, but the personality that wields it.

Re:Carte blanche

[geek2k5]

A low level employee at a large company downloads illegal content despite safeguards. The company gets shut down. Lots of money is lost. Big time lawsuit, with in house lawyers in charge. (The low level employee could even be a plant.)

A volunteer for a politician downloads illegal content. Web access at a national level gets shut down.

So many possibilities.

Re:Carte blanche

[CodeBuster]

Anonymous VPN services will start to become a lot more popular when Joe Sixpack sees his friend Jim Riverhead get hounded by bill collectors daily for a multimillion judgement for downloading an album.

We may also see an increase in the use of cash cards (ala Green Dot) to purchase mobile WiFi access with a false name and address. Another side effect of this will be to accelerate the decline of free anonymous WiFi access at places like coffee shops, airports, bookstores and libraries; nobody will want to take on the liability.

Re:Carte blanche

[couchslug]

One thing USians don't get that rioty French and Greeks and such DO get is that without protest, the government will go on fucking them.

USians _used_ to get that, but 1776 was a long time ago.

Re:Carte blanche

[Eunuchswear]

Under the tar the pavés are still there

(And, of course, sous les pavés, la plage!

(If you dig up the paving stones in Paris you find nice yellow(ish) sand, in May '68 this was noticed, and gave a nice festive air to rioting - let's chuck rocks at the CRS scum then lie around on the beach!))

Re:Carte blanche

[pyrosine]

I think, if i was an ISP in that scenario, I would give them the details for IFPI/MAFIAA employees (or whatever other anti-piracy organistations reside in france) and see the ensuing chaos. They get details, Im not fined

Re:Carte blanche

[HuguesT]

In this case there would be no jury, just a judge, because this is not a criminal offence, only a misdemeanor. However, defendants can appeal any decision, and if enough people do this, soon the judicial system will become completely clogged by this issue, in effect reaching the same effect.

In general I don't know if jury nullification exists in France. Popular juries are only called in for major crimes like murders, so there is little chance of nullification in this case. Civil law matters are dealt with through a judge or a professional jury.

Re:Carte blanche

[NeutronCowboy]

They recently changed that to a presumption of innocence. It was actually a huge deal - not the least because it was seen as an American system. While the old system wasn't quite guilty until proven innocent, the prosecutors had immense leeway in how to conduct an investigation once they had settled on a possible perpetrator.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking about Europe, have a look at this:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/205958/eu_votes_to_toughen_rules_on_internet_piracy.html
The gist: a non-legislative text, drafted by French center-right MEP Marielle Gallo, was adopted by 328 to 245 votes, leaves the way clear for the EC to criminalise file-sharing across the EU.

The actual issue aside, I think it's ridiculous that texts with such a potential for very draconian effects only needs a 50% majority. Implementing the text in actual law would unacceptably infringe upon our human rights according to some 40% of MEPs. Taking lobbying by the media companies into account, they probably represent about 60% of Europe's people. Yet this is happening.

Re:Carte blanche

[HuguesT]

Maybe but the gov. cannot control all the ISPs ; note that Orange already has the highest fees, so they might be onto a losing proposition if they are the only one who play nice with Hadopi.

Re:Carte blanche

[CurseOfTheVampire]

Hey, don't think for a second I agree with what's happening here. It's just that e.g. France and Italy don't seem to adhere to common-law principles like the UK and US do (or are supposed to). I'm not sure if this is true throughout Europe, but:

The "Napoleonic Code," which continues in France and other countries conquered by France, hold that the accused is guilty until proven innocent (thus, the point of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables). This was a re-working of previous monarchical attitudes toward law enforcement (and as Napoleon was emporer, one isn't surprised.) And this is exactly why the "founding fathers" who wrote our Constitution did it the way the did: to avoid those abuses stemming from that attitude. We have enough wrongfully convicted as it is, which makes it really creepy to realize that even with our errors, we've the best judicial system on the planet.

[http://askville.amazon.com/America-innocent-proven-guilty-Italy-uphold/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=61767806]

Re:Carte blanche

[CurseOfTheVampire]

Also, for a bit more detail (from the same site):

In English speaking countries, we use the common law as the basis of our legal system. In its origins, the Norman French occupied England, which was largely unsettled and not at all well policed. So it became relatively easy to have someone charged with a crime, since witnesses were rare. Juries were used to decide guilt and the facts of the case because the Normans did not speak the vernacular very well. Over time, the burden of proof was placed upon the accuser, later the Crown. It has been that way in our system for nearly a eight hundred years. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

The origins of law in France, Italy, Spain and a few other places, they follow what is called "civil law," which also includes criminal law. The historical antecedents of that system are the Code Justinian, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis church law, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law the customary law of the place, and the Code Napoleon, which was a re-codification of existing law. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_code

Under that system, it is the duty of the state to investigate crimes and to only bring charges if there is sufficient evidence to justify them. If accused, the defendant has the duty to try to show the state where it is was wrong in its investigation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof

Re:Carte blanche

[Yvanhoe]

I suggested that if they are asked to give the information in numerical form, they switch to punchcards.
"Well, what do you mean numerical ?"

Re:Carte blanche

[WoLpH]

What if they accidently returned the wrong identification details? Say... the identification details of the copyright holders?

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

Don't be silly anon. coward:

Nobody loses their rights. The employees inside the corporation still have the right to vote/speak/etc even if the corporation does not.

Re:Carte blanche

[commodore64_love]

You think Robespierre had a good personality? He became a tyrant himself, killing people simply because he didn't like their ideas.

Re:Carte blanche

[nospam007]

... HADOPI request the IDs and execute the 3 strikes process (e-mail, snail-mail, disconnection).

How they would know my email address is beyond me, I certainly don't have one at my ISP.

Re:Carte blanche

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

What they should do is send, by snail mail, an authorization code which the copyright holder can use to access an online repository of identifications. Of course, each individual ID should require a CAPTCHA to access, after first covering the cost of the mailing by online payment.

Re:Carte blanche

[Dashiva Dan]

No, they should make it easier for them and make them available online.
Of course, there'd need to be a signup for the account to access them, with triple password secure login, and to keep it secure, the login would only be valid for a single ip's data.
So the process would be:

1. Register to get ip details
2. wait for registration confirmation
3. log in to system
4. provide authentication of your login
5. match captcha
6. get details
7. registration gets deleted - one time use only

That would be the process to collect each ip's details.
Of course, a written request for each ip would also be required.
If they don't like the process then they could be mailed.
Each ip's details individually mailed again, of course, CoD.
And to ensure they're protected, they would have to be first class registered mail signature required.

I mean sure, if you legally have to provide them, fine, but you still need to ensure the security of the information.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Robespierre had a good personality?

I never said that.

Re:Carte blanche

[networkBoy]

In the united states a jury trial can be demanded by the defendant for any matter criminal or civil for amounts in excess of $20.00. IIRC if the judge disagrees with the request for a jury a loss by the defendant can then cause the defendant to be required to pay for the added cost of the jury trial.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure that the various governments REALLY want better privacy protection? You don't think that they just say that, and then point the finger at the "faceless" EU, and say "they made me do it"?

'Cause, as you probably know, the governments have veto-rights to everything in EU. They just never use it when it comes to this, because they don't really want to.

Re:Carte blanche

[bsDaemon]

Misdemeanors are criminal offenses. They just aren't felonies. But guess what, the Constitution entitles you to a trail by a jury of your peers for any case involving damages over $20! Seventh Amendment, bitches. Of course, that doesn't help French people, but it would provide some buffer in the U.S.

Re:Carte blanche

[purplepolecat]

(posting to undo accidental moderation)

Re:Carte blanche

[bsDaemon]

trial, not trail... grr.

Re:Carte blanche

[MiniMike]

What's wrong with having the info tattooed on the back of a rabid dingo, to be released in the next board meeting of the company requesting the information? Assuming they're meeting within the 8 day limit.

Re:Carte blanche

[SuricouRaven]

But if any congressman voted for that, Disney would give several hundred million dollars in campaign contributions to his opponents and ensure that ABC never said anything positive about him. Murdoch would then go a little further, and have Fox run a story about how he secretly aids terrorists and may have once raped a baby.

Re:Carte blanche

[SuricouRaven]

It could only be seen to violate the tenth if the feds do it. Nothing in there to stop the states individually. Besides, the commerce clause has bloomed into a giant excuse to just ignore the tenth amendment any time they wish.

Re:Carte blanche

[DissociativeBehavior]

Or mommy and daddy get scared and stop using eMule ;-) That's the real purpose of the law.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how burkas and race are connected.

Stupid fuckwad...

Re:Carte blanche

[haruchai]

It's funny that the right-wing nutcons in the US are quick to dismiss the French as a bunch of wine-tippling sissies while at the same time crowing about how US Citizens need guns in order to defend society from the government.
Yet, when push comes to shove, it's the sissy Frogs who don't hesitate to rise up in force while the redoubtable American defenders sit their fat asses in cheap armchairs in parks waving signs depicting their mixed-race President as the political descendant of a white supremacist mass murderer.

Re:Carte blanche

[ToasterMonkey]

The future will be the most interesting. A kid downloads illegal content... and daddy the freelance software engineer gets shut down. That would be one of the first lawsuits.

If you violate the terms of service, you get service disconnected. What's new about this? Daddies around the world didn't sue AOL when their kids sent IM spam and got the family account banned. I don't get what the uproar is, Internet anonymity is not some fundamental right. It's already a farce, this just automates IP identification for a purpose you guys don't like and cry about it.

Re:Carte blanche

[AwaxSlashdot]

First, your ISP knows AT LEAST your home address, the place where they provide ADSL/cable connection.
Second, your ISP generally provides you with an email address.
At last, your ISP might also request you to provide an alternate email address (personnal, work, ) where they can contact you. This address is generally used to warn you of billing issue and give you a chance to fix the situation before they cut the connection.

Re:Carte blanche

[Nethemas the Great]

Protest in the U.S., esp. rioty protest has a different set of consequences that generally do not balance well with the felt injustice. Even the reporters that report on these protests are similarly punished.

While the founding fathers of the U.S. built in the notion of defending citizens against government injustice even to the point of militia action since the founding there has been a constant effort made to erode these protections. If the subject matter is sufficiently distasteful to the government preemptive actions taken to prevent like-minded individuals from forming organized (esp. large) action groups. The system is rigged to keep the offended marginalized and powerless.

Re:Carte blanche

[StikyPad]

When you rearrange the letters of HADOPI, you get "PAID HO." Coincidence?

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

(unless you're DUI of course).

That's the only exception you can think of?

A child has two parents who are baked all the time, and is neglected and malnourished because mom and dad don't have jobs and spend all their money getting high. They can't quit because the substance is physically addictive. No victim there?

Oh yeah, so let's pay for food for the children and treatment for the parents on the backs of the tax-paying public. Now the choices these people made are taking money from my pocket and their "right" to something they have not earned denies me my right to something I did earn.

I agree with you that we should let people put whatever they want into their bodies, but don't make others pay for the consequences. If you are going to let people do something stupid, then you should let them have the brunt of the consequences. Mandatory seat belts, motorcycle helmets, bans on base jumping... all can go away as far as I care... as long as those people pay out of their own pockets when they are seriously injured as a result. If they can't... well that's how evolution happens.

Re:Carte blanche

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So one ISP sent back the identification printed on paper since the format the id should be sent is not specifically defined.

Others have contributed ideas along those lines like using printed captchas.

I suggest going paperless and even adopting one of the formats of the entertainment industry -
deliver the information as a video of scrolling text on a bluray (with full DRM protections enabled, of course).

Re:Carte blanche

[Kymermosst]

This is the precise situation interpretive dance was invented for. Also, since this is France: mimes!

You missed such an opportunity here.

Interpretive dance + french maids.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

Further, it should be printed using captcha images.

Re:Carte blanche

[Lobachevsky]

Large corporations are run by far fewer people than they employ. And it's not a democracy within a corporation. The "suits" make the decisions, leave at 4pm to play golf, while the middle class clerks toil away to 8pm. If the clerks don't like it, they're encouraged to quit and find an identical large corporation where the same scenario repeats itself.

It's like saying Afghanistan is run, maintained, and full of... "people" -- even though all the real power belongs to the Taliban.

Re:Carte blanche

[The Wild Norseman]

The argument could be made that anti-drug laws violate the individual states' constitutions even if the federal constitution stands mute on the issue. Little is said about those state constitutions that have a more direct and protective second amendment analogue, for example.

Besides, your statement does nothing to address the issue that even those states which have declared medical use of marijuana to be legal, it has not stopped the feds from prosecuting individuals under federal law, even though they are legally abiding by state drug laws.

I would submit that this is one of those unintended consequences regarding the idea that the feds and states are separate jurisdictions which have overlapping yet separate crimes and so therefore do not run afoul of any double jeopardy protections.

Re:Carte blanche

[Thiez]

I think not!

Re:Carte blanche

[St.Creed]

You think Robespierre had a good personality? He became a tyrant himself, killing people simply because he didn't like their ideas.

Which is exactly why Robespierre is such an excellent candidate for our liason to the RIAA.

Re:Carte blanche

[JorDan Clock]

They have to identify "infringers" first, then look up the data. You're right, the identity data is easy to find, but they have to report everyone that is a supposed infringer. That means if the industry goons are also monitoring for "infringers" and finds people that aren't being reported by the ISP, then the ISP is liable for a fine. So they're going to have to set up a system (With real, live humans probably) to identify "infringers" and then send the information to the industry.

And I thought the US held the title for most ass-backwards technology law in the form of the DMCA, but this one is really fighting for the crown.

Re:Carte blanche

[daveime]

I don't know how this system will work, with all the mistaken identity that goes on in France.

The copyright infringer is always going to be some guy named Jack Hughes.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, the citizens are afraid of their government. In France, the government is afraid of their citizens. Something we taught them long ago and have since forgotten.

Re:Carte blanche

[spazdor]

So tell me, AC. How exactly do you "Slammer-time" a contractual relationship?

I'm picturing an anthropomorphized stack of corporate charters behind bars, lamenting and playing harmonica.

Re:Carte blanche

[Fross]

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?264839 should do :)

Re:Carte blanche

[shutdown -p now]

The piece that you've quoted is pure bullshit. Not only the very phrase "innocent until proven guilty" was formulated by a Frenchman, but France actually has it written into one of their basic document, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, Article 9 (yes, it is still in force in France today - their Constitution explicitly makes it so). Ironically, there is nothing in US Constitution that explicitly makes presumption of innocence a legal right - it has effectively been established by SCOTUS.

Re:Carte blanche

[shutdown -p now]

In America, the citizens are afraid of their government. In France, the government is afraid of their citizens.

And yet again you miss the point. It is important to realize that the relationship of citizens with their government does not have to be antagonistic - then and only then the government truly is of the people. That's the key part of GP's post! If government is "we" and not "them", then it doesn't make any sense to say "we are afraid of us", whichever way you meant it.

If you're afraid of your government, your political system is broken and should be fixed. But if you think that it would be best for your government to be afraid of you, the same holds true!

Re:Carte blanche

[shutdown -p now]

I suspect that most "USians" hold private property too sacrosanct to riot on the same scale as what you see in France or Greece.

Re:Carte blanche

[shutdown -p now]

European governments have infinite respect for privacy.

On a serious note - from what I've seen, Europe is strong on privacy when it comes to private companies divulging personal info. Not so much so when it's about the state collecting information.

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

"We will then start to see law firms performing one lawsuit (because it is easy to try) with 50,000+ defendants"

Unhappily we do not have class actions in France, it was proposed a few years ago, but rejected under the lobbying of big corporation.
we are screwed

Re:Carte blanche

[AmiMoJo]

Are ISPs legally required to keep logs of who had what IP address assigned at a particular time? If not I'd simply turn off logging and respond to every request with "no data available."

Re:Carte blanche

[Anonymous Coward]

  You may have noticed that we use also "we" while talking about europe, whereas the brits use "they".

  The scenario is very unlikely for a much simpler reason: there are no class actions in France. This was actually a promise of the president during his campaign, and it has been swept under the carpet along many others that did not favor big businesses.

  France is not ripe for any kind of uprisal, it is an aged nation stuffed with happy-pills and stories about security measures, terrorism, and immigration. If you want stg done about citizen rights in the US, don t wait for "we".

Re:Carte blanche

[kangsterizer]

there's only 3 or 4 ISPs which have their own lines in France. Other ISPs uses other's infrastructure.
SFR has the music lobby behind, Orange has governement employes forced inside, we've Free and Numericable left. Free being the only one that might not bend to government corruption (which itself is corrupted by medias).
And it's just " might " :)

Re:Carte blanche

[sjames]

And surprise, surprise, if you look hard enough, almost everybody is guilty of something.

That's a near certainty when the laws become numerous and don't necessarily reflect the views of the people.

Re:Carte blanche

[Nikker]

How can you disconnect your customers at the tune of 10K per day and still intend to be in business?

Re:Carte blanche

[sea4ever]

That's a nifty idea but geez, that idea will wipe out an entire forest..

Re:Carte blanche

[wimvds]

Good luck finding a dingo in France! You'd have better luck tattooing a frog or a snail (hmmm, escargots) :p.

Re:Carte blanche

[monkyyy]

i thought it held the crown forever ago? by a long shot

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't have thought they can do this even without signing ACTA.

Typical

[Rik Sweeney]

To put this into perspective, a United States judge ruled recently that the ISP Time Warner only has to give up 28 IP-addresses a month (1 per day) to copyright holders because of the immense workload the identifications would cause

So? The ISPs will have to hire more staff to cope with the demand. This is an excellent way to create new jobs and get people back to work and help the economy recover faster.

But no, you only look at the downside :P

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, almost missed your sarcasm.

Re:Typical

[kevinNCSU]

I was all about to go all candlemaker's petition on you until I caught the emoticon at the end, lol

Re:Typical

[AnonGCB]

Yes, the extra workload that doesn't bring in any extra money. Good luck with that theory.

Re:Typical

[somersault]

2 guys that only barely got the joke, and one that completely missed it despite the emote.

Excuse me while I go and weep for humanity..

Re:Typical

[John Hasler]

> The ISPs will have to hire more staff to cope with the demand.

Wouldn't it be simpler for the government to hire people to go around vandalizing property, thereby creating work for tradesmen? That should help mollify the unions while providing employment to young men from the suburbs doing something they enjoy. Break enough windows and soon the economy will be booming (and they can blame all the damage on the Roma!)

Re:Typical

[Superken7]

You might want to check your sarcasm-detector, I think its not working right ;)

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I block my whole country on my download machine since the early days, so if somebody gets my IP it will be collected on foreign soil and not so easily acceptable in our justice, not to mention that that country's local **AA might not give a shit.

But anyway, if I get a warning, I _will_ switch to a different ISP, on principle. That will add to the cost for the ISPs, if enough people do it, they will complain.

Then I'll rent a server in Tonga or Burundi and do my downloading there and tunnel to it to download my stuff.

I will alert my ISP to the fact that I have an open AP on purpose so that it's on record when I challenge the warning in court. I encourage everybody to do the same, Justice isn't able to handle real crimes within the legal time limits, a couple of thousand additional challenges a day will help a lot to worsen that.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true, ISPs will probably have to hire more people to go through all the requests, and thus more people will have jobs and economy will improve. But but, there's few buts in it. Firstly, who gonna pay the bill for new jobs, music industry or ISP? If the bill goes by some decision for ISPS to pay, it obviously will be forwarded to the ISP customers. Secondly even if the music industry would be so "kind" and pay the bill, would you really want having more people monitoring your life @ internet? Third, even if there is enough money to invest into these "new jobs", are this kind of copyright law monitoring/(enforcing) jobs really needed? Fourth, what does all this "monitoring private life" have to do with creative culture? How would it work if _all_ industries in the world would require private life monitoring for what ever the reason would be.

Re:Typical

[vlueboy]

Funny. At the risk of being "in before Whoosh!"
I'll say one important thing to remember if you're planning to live in the US soon.

This extremely low maximum under 30 IP's per month in a country of 300,000,000 people (that's 10^7 times larger) is an unfortunate result of

1) The decreasing trust in American "work productivity."
2) Our legal system getting in the way of any expectation of speedy processing of (1).

Creating a "smaller legal" system to counter that will never happen. The US probably needs to do like Russia and break up into smaller countries with no more than EU-like ties. That way, independent but decisive laws are born because they won't need to account for 3x10^8 people from different time-zones, wildly different backgrounds, federal law putting people under one banner on issues that are clearly best decided more locally, and law enforcement complaining about lack of jurisdiction because conmen took you for a ride and then moved around.

So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[assemblerex]

If 10% resolve to a proxy server in Korea, then what? Someone in france running a proxy server is about to get a shitload of mail.

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[Xest]

They'll just target IPs or hostnames assigned to French ISPs and ditch foreign IPs, that's really all they need to do to solve that problem.

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[TheRaven64]

It won't. It is trivial to find out which ISP owns a particular IP - all allocations are public. Once you've identified an IP owned by a French ISP, then you can ask them to identify the customer.

Oh, and before everyone starts being glad that this is in France so it doesn't affect them, they might like to check the open source programs on their hard drive. Most of you will find at least one project that uses bandwidth and equipment provided by free.fr.

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you trust them to have thought this through that far? (Not that that takes a lot of thought, but still...)

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[ArsenneLupin]

Just substitute Sarkozy address for these foreign servers. O, and if they object that it's always the same address, also add his family and close friends...

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[MacGyver2210]

If I go through a French proxy, as far as they can tell I'm using the internet connection that proxy machine uses. This means that they're going to be disconnecting the wrong people quite often.

Re:So what happens to IP addresses outside France?

[VisceralLogic]

I imagine they would be quite happy to shut down an open proxy if it was contributing to file sharing.

Let the show begin!

[zrbyte]

Wonder how many false accusations will result from this operation. This ought to be interesting to watch.

Re:Let the show begin!

[Robert Zenz]

We'll never know. If they really throw 150k IPs per day at the ISPs, no one will know if they really did something or not. No way to check that amount.

So it's basically boiling down to: "You give us everything we want, or we'll sue your ass of". And that "what we want" can be the IPs of heavy-uploaders from Madonnas new single, or guys listening to music at Jamendo.com .

Re:Let the show begin!

[schon]

Wonder how many false accusations will result from this operation.

LOTS. Considering how trivial it is to forge an IP address on a peer to peer network, and how simple it is to find which IP addresses are french, they are one 4chan meme away from the whole country going dark.

If someone has the IP addresses of the French parliament members, that would be a good place to start, IMHO.

Re:Let the show begin!

[zacronos]

Wonder how many false accusations will result from this operation.

LOTS. Considering how trivial it is to forge an IP address on a peer to peer network, and how simple it is to find which IP addresses are french, they are one 4chan meme away from the whole country going dark.

If someone has the IP addresses of the French parliament members, that would be a good place to start, IMHO.

The more automated they make it, the more vulnerable it would be to this sort of thing. If it's too hard to get the personal IP addresses of French parliament members, I would imagine it wouldn't be as hard to get some IP addresses associated with various French government agencies. It may not be quite as direct and personal, but if it's the low-hanging fruit...

Re:Let the show begin!

[umghhh]

well whether the accused actually did something wrong is sadly rather irrelevant. The burden of the proof is on the accused which means heavy legal costs and unknown chance of winning. Better to settle down on some 'small' (well comparing with possible legal costs and also possible fine that could result from lost case) fine and hope this is not going to happen again. This is the choice majority will make. If minority of daring ones starts growing few cases that find their way into courts maybe enough to keep that in check. It is no-win situation for the accused. I guess the only thing that we citizens can do is by lubricants, bend if asked too and hope the unpleasant part does not last too long.

Re:Let the show begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder whether they will be able to distinguish between IP addresses that are used to provide internet access for people and spoofed IP addresses that are assigned to servers that are used to serve things like movie websites, Copyright protection organisations and so on...

If their systems are somewhat automated it might even be possible to spoof HADOPI into sending themselves a nastygram...

Re:Let the show begin!

[HuguesT]

I don't know. I think really innocent people hurt by this will fight really hard, like they did in the US. People can fight the 3rd strike in court, and there are people in the judiciary who hate Sarkozy's gut who can't wait for this.

This is going to be an enormous disaster for Sarkozy.

Re:Let the show begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

You may think about the 'seedfuck' software (that creates fake IP on p2p network).
But it seems that the firm that is checking Ip will try to connect and exchange data, before sending this IP to the ISP, so this may not work.

Re:Let the show begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think they'll a) let anyone report IPs without some kind of license fee payment or industry vetting, or b) bulk submit entire blocks of government associated IPs to be whitelisted? Both of those precautions will be built in from the start.

Re:Let the show begin!

[St.Creed]

Just wait until they DO automate the process. Don't hit them now - they're not vulnerable enough. Just wait until they tie everything together in one, huge, nationwide, automated Denial-Of-Service horror. Then hit 'em where it hurts.

Erm

[ledow]

And are the *copyright holders* tasked with identifying the same amount of copyright material, verifying it (which would presumably involve downloading a substantial proportion of it themselves, otherwise it's just hearsay - "Yes, your honour, I saw this IP address connect to this tracker asking for this file. Even though it's called "Aliens" I can't tell you the content because it *obvious* that it must be the Hollywood film of the same name"), its original IP address, the copyright holder (i.e. if they find infringing material that isn't under *their* copyright, are they obliged to notify the authorities and/or the person whose copyright it is? Surely otherwise they are deliberately ignoring a crime? That could get interesting).

It's one of those laws that'll be in fashion and then in a year's time the copyright holders will all be complaining that it's insufficient and not effective and too much work for them and they'll give up on it. Hopefully they *have* bitten off more than they could chew and ISP's therefore have to employ dozens of staff, double their broadband prices etc. to keep up and that'll provide a pretty clear economic oversight to those implementing that law and, most importantly, putting some of that burden on the ISP's.

And all for a letter dropping through the door where people reply saying "It wasn't me, my son visited/dog did it/wireless was hacked/computer caught a virus/etc." and you have to go to court to try to prove it eventually anyway (cutting off your broadband for alleged but unproven infringements sounds a pretty good way to waste the courts time too, and they take much less kindly to that).

Re:Erm

[Joce640k]

I'm sure the RIAA is confident that it can bury/pay off all the false accusations.

Re:Erm

[umghhh]

cut access means no money paid I can imagine? Could this mean that false accusations which are inevitable will cause ISPs to fight against this law due to lost business??? OTOH the way it works in Germany right now is that the whole burden of the proof is on the accused site with lawyers of the might recording industry being able to chose friendly courts all over the country thus increasing their own chances and costs for the opponents. I wonder where this ends?

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, "Aliens" doesn't exists in France, it's called "Alien: le Retour" (Alien: The Return) :)

Re:Erm

[Antity-H]

Well unfortunately you don't get off the hook simply by saying that it wasn't you, you have to prove it wasn't you and if you do, you still get fined because you neglected the security of your network installation.

To "help" people with securing their network, the french government issued a 200+ pages specification for a software that would secure your computer and prevent it from being used to downlaod illegal content.

The specification requires the program to be one the best malware ever created, able to disrupt anti virus and anti spyware so it's not removed by error, hidden so the process can't be killed by the user, so the program can't be uninstalled, logs in both a crypted and an unencrypted files all network actions of the machine, etc etc

Basically the best spyware ever. This is on the market for a contractor to realize. Oh and obviously people will have to buy it to comply with the network security requirements.

I cant' wait for the first lawsuits.

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

No money paid ? Who are you kidding here ?
You get your connection cut, you have to pay for it, and your name is in a national file so that you can't get another access.

Well, that's the theory, at least.

Re:Erm

[HungryHobo]

The scarier posibility is that it might half work and other governments will go the same way.
I can imagine that malware being written and [not forced but if you want to not get sued you have to install it for liability reasons.... and once most people are using it the remainder can be forced on the basis of "if you have nothing to hide"] pushed onto machines.

Right to read anyone?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

That software sounds like pretty much what he described.

Re:Erm

[radish]

Here's an idea. Create a whole bunch of ~700mb video files - content is unimportant as long as you filmed it yourself. Name them things like "Aliens.mp4" and "Terminator.mp4" and add a license screen at the beginning indicating that these movies are free for anyone to distribute or copy provided they do not work for and are not associated with the major film studios or any of their agents - you're the copyright holder so you can make up whatever terms you want. Now torrent all these, wait for the enforcers to download them for verification, and hadopi their asses :)

Re:Erm

[Rogerborg]

Here's an idea: do it, rather than posting on Slashdot about it.

Re:Erm

[ztij]

And are the *copyright holders* tasked with identifying the same amount of copyright material, verifying it (which would presumably involve downloading a substantial proportion of it themselves, otherwise it's just hearsay - "Yes, your honour, I saw this IP address connect to this tracker asking for this file. Even though it's called "Aliens" I can't tell you the content because it *obvious* that it must be the Hollywood film of the same name")

That at least can be automated pretty well with pattern recognition. There are companies that scan youtube to find copyrighted material for the copyright holders. It's not done by hand.

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

And all for a letter dropping through the door where people reply saying "It wasn't me, my son visited/dog did it/wireless was hacked/computer caught a virus/etc." and you have to go to court to try to prove it eventually anyway (cutting off your broadband for alleged but unproven infringements sounds a pretty good way to waste the courts time too, and they take much less kindly to that).

The thing is, you're not accused of infringement. You're actually accused of not securing your Internet connection or your computer well enough. So it doesn't matter if you claim it was your dog.

Re:Erm

[amentajo]

Here's an idea: do it, rather than posting on Slashdot about it.

radish may already plan on doing it, you don't know. Posting on Slashdot about it does not take away his/her ability to do so.

Re:Erm

[ledow]

And just about every court in the world recognises that it's extremely hard to prove a negative. That's what I'm waiting for - the court's interpretation of the first few real life cases where a denial is officially lodged. The problem is that EU law trumps French law (absolutely, completely, 100%) and EU legislation is pretty hot on things like not requiring people to prove they *DIDN'T* do things.

Fining someone in such an environment is really tricky, because you're basically putting undue burden on them to prove their innocence (which is a much simpler set of laws to interpret and can still basically trump shit like this). Every law that passes is not valid in all its points until it's been tested multiple times in multiple courts.

It could easily be equated, in a court, to someone being fined for not locking their house, which allowed other people to walk in and use their house as a brothel / drug factory / playing loud music etc... Yes, they should protect their property, but can't be held liable for a third-party's actions unless you can prove that they were aware of what was going on, or involved in it. EU law, especially some quite basic human rights legislation, trumps this "law" into the ground and France can be forced to rescind it. The UK has been forced to rescind and modify laws that did similar things because they clashed with EU interpretations of similar laws.

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

And? If the French RIAA doesn't distribute the material, those license terms won't affect them. Also, they can't be bound by terms that you didn't provide up front.

Not only can't you sue the for breach of license, you are legally distributing your own film so you can't take them down for breach of copyright law either.

Re:Erm

[Rogerborg]

If you're posting about it, you're not doing it. If you're planning to do it, you're not doing it. Talk is very, very cheap.

Re:Erm

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I did an experiment like that years ago, see: http://web.archive.org/web/20080624062729/http://el-muerte.student.utwente.nl/warez/

Initially I was actually sending data from /dev/urandom, first it was just a tarpit and files would never reach the 100%. But it didn't take long enough before it became too popular and I had to thicken the tar for the larger files. And a certain point I even added a limit to the number of concurrent downloads. And in the end it only showed the service unable error that 20 (non-existing) downloads were already busy.

I don't know if the university ever received a complaint about it, as they never notified me (they probably checked the the page themselves and saw it was fake).

Re:Erm

[MacGyver2210]

Shut up. These videos take a long time to encode. Slashdot is a great way to pass the time.

Re:Erm

[MacGyver2210]

Won't they notice from the slew of "It's fake" comments and severe lack of seeders/peers that it's bull?

Re:Erm

[DavidTC]

Yes, those people who've failed to secure their network by having people frame them.

Re:Erm

[sorak]

Here's an idea: do it, rather than posting on Slashdot about it.

He's posting because I'm sure that if one guy did this, he would be laughed out of court, or he would be punished with no regard to guilt, or he would be slapped with some fine that basically amounts to "harrassment/abusing public resources/you pissed us off". If half the country did it, then it might make an interesting protest.

Re:Erm

[couchslug]

"Here's an idea: do it, rather than posting on Slashdot about it."

Here's a better idea: post to 4chan about it. Often.

Re:Erm

[Skuld-Chan]

One thing about fake torrents though - unless the content is interesting they won't go anywhere because they won't be seeded.

Its sadly another place the market has its hand.

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically the best spyware ever.

So it's Windows only?

Re:Erm

[greylion3]

Here's an idea. Create a whole bunch of ~700mb video files - content is unimportant as long as you filmed it yourself. Name them things like "Aliens.mp4" and "Terminator.mp4"

Why would the enforcers waste time downloading and verifying the files referred to by torrents, when torrent users already do that for them?

Re:Erm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until they sue you for violating movie names Trademarks instead of Copyright infringements.

Re:Erm

[Tripkipke]

I'd love to have the script that generates this...

Re:Erm

[AK Marc]

But it was proven by someone else to be you. Your connection, which you are responsible for, accessed illegal content. That's "proof" even if just circumstantial, that you did it. They most certainly are not proceeding without proof. You may not like it. You may think it flawed, but they are most certainly not doing without any proof at all.

It could easily be equated, in a court, to someone being fined for not locking their house, which allowed other people to walk in and use their house as a brothel / drug factory / playing loud music etc... Yes, they should protect their property, but can't be held liable for a third-party's actions unless you can prove that they were aware of what was going on, or involved in it.

Again, you are arguing law from common sense. They two are not related (in fact, some may assert they are opposites). If you are negligent, you can be held responsible. In most places in the US, it's illegal to leave your car running with the keys in it (running without the keys, like remote starts are usually legal). Why? Because it makes theft easy, and the cops don't want to waste time investigating your negligence. Go ahead, look it up for where you are, or let me know where you are and I'll try. If it's illegal to leave your car running with the keys in it, then there is an analogue already in place, like your home example, that really does blame the victim, as these laws against your IP. You may not like it, but you can't argue it to be inconsistent if there is already a similar law on the books.

Re:Erm

[kiwix]

The best part of the law is that you can only defend yourself after they cut your connection...

Re:Erm

[Rogerborg]

If I'm bored, I'll go do what everyone else does: get in line for your momma.

Re:Erm

[Burpmaster]

Here's an idea: do it, rather than posting on Slashdot about it.

radish may already plan on doing it, you don't know. Posting on Slashdot about it does not take away his/her ability to do so.

Yes it does.

Re:Erm

[The_Noid]

If someone creates these I'd be happy to seed the torrents :)

Re:Erm

[Chowderbags]

To "help" people with securing their network, the french government issued a 200+ pages specification for a software that would secure your computer and prevent it from being used to downlaod illegal content.

It took them 200 pages to tell people to unplug their computers?

Seriously, they have to know that saying you've got "unbreakable" security just invites everyone from script kiddies up to PhD researchers to break your program in every possible way. And it will get broken. Within a week (probably within a day). The more complicated a program is, the more likely it is to get broken.

Oh, I get it, they don't care if it works or not, they just want to point to something they can say is "secure" so that it's obviously your fault, and your fault alone, if anything "bad" emanates to or from your computer.

That's Everyone

[Dr_Barnowl]

I call BS on the 1-per-day thing for Time Warner - you're seriously telling me that your IP addresses are given out by computers, to routers with unique MAC addresses which you use for billing / service tier purposes, and you can't automate a process that matches a given DHCP lease to a given customer? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Re:That's Everyone

[nate_in_ME]

I think the catch is that it would be easy for Time Warner to automate checking for who has a particular IP address right now. However, depending on how frequently they change IP addresses(do they change every time the modem requests a DHCP renewal, or on some other interval?), the problem lies in figuring out who had that IP at a particular point in the past. The historical information as far as who had what IP might not even be logged. Also, with TW in particular(and probably other companies as well), because a large part of their growth has been acquisitions of other companies, not all the systems are fully tied together. Because of this, a request may take some time to get routed from whatever office it was sent to the actual office that has the information needed.

Re:That's Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, unless there is some burden on the ISP to verify the claim as mentioned above. That at least has so have someone view the content to prove it was copyrighted (and illegally obtained).

ISP should be able to charge an admin fee for each ip, much like data protection officers can when they receive a request in the UK

Re:That's Everyone

[somersault]

Maybe they actually do something reasonable like download the file themselves to make sure that the accused is actually breaking copyright. As someone pointed out just above, a torrent named "Aliens" could be anything. There's probably paperwork (and hopefully a nice fee too) to be done too to allow someone's address to be given out.

Re:That's Everyone

[pehrs]

Okay, I will bite.

Kalle is 00:23:6c:8a:75:26
Oscar is 00:21:b7:24:52:18

Sep 22 17:04:08 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.74 from 00:23:6c:8a:75:26 via re0
Sep 22 17:04:09 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPACK on 192.168.0.74 to 00:23:6c:8a:75:26 via re0
Sep 22 22:29:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPRELEASE of 192.168.0.74 from 00:23:6c:8a:75:26 via re0 (found)
Sep 22 22:29:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPRELEASE of 192.168.0.74 from 00:23:6c:8a:75:26 via re0 (found)
Sep 22 22:29:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: Released lease for IP address 192.168.0.74
Sep 22 22:30:18 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0
Sep 22 22:30:18 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPOFFER on 192.168.0.74 to 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0
Sep 22 22:30:20 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.74 from 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0
Sep 22 22:30:20 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPACK on 192.168.0.74 to 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0
Sep 22 22:34:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPRELEASE of 192.168.0.74 from 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0 (found)
Sep 22 22:34:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: DHCPRELEASE of 192.168.0.74 from 00:21:b7:24:52:18 via re0 (found)
Sep 22 22:34:37 husky dhcpd[2673]: Released lease for IP address 192.168.0.74

Given this data, please tell me which user had 192.168.0.74 at Sep 22 22:30...

Finding out how the switching fabric in a large network is configured at a point in time is a non-trivial problem. To this you should add that you don't know the precision of clocks involved, nor do you know if one of your users suddenly changed their MAC address. Possible you can log MAC address-port allocation, but even this is a very crude tool, as you have to match this logging information against your DHCP logs and then make sure that nobody was cheating the system by hard configuring an IP so it wasn't handed out by DHCP (remember: dumb switches are common in the last mile!)

I don't envy anybody having to build such a system that can stand up to any scrutiny.

Re:That's Everyone

[infalliable]

It's 1 per day for copyright holders (specifically the USCG on behalf of a copyright holder). They process many more for law enforcement which eats up time and is significantly more important.

I'm sure they were also worried about person X coming and demanding 100 immediate lookups for copyright issues, then person A, then person B coming and doing the same. It's also likely the system is not centralized and the ISP has near zero business incentive to comply.

Since it's for a subpeona, they really need to manually verify it as well. The cost for getting it wrong is quite high from a PR standpoint. It shouldn't be 100% automated.

Re:That's Everyone

[wvmarle]

It will depend on your total configuration.

My previous ISP seemed to work that way indeed: just do a DHCP request through the cable modem, and I got my IP and was connected. This was a semi-fixed IP address, for months on end I would get the same address, so should be pretty easy for them to match an IP address to an actual connection, and with that subscriber. Basically until there was some network maintenance.

My current ISP I have to do PPPoE - that means send them un/pw combination to get an IP (but interestingly I can get at least two outside IPs on one connection) and Internet connection. Depending on their logging it should be much easier to determine which user an IP belongs to at a certain time. Even though my IP changes all the time.

Re:That's Everyone

[irix]

DHCP option 82 will contain the MAC address of the cable modem as inserted by the CMTS. This is checked before IP address allocation is done, and is verified by the DHCP server (this is how they identify subscribers).

The DHCP servers will be synced with NTP.

I'm not saying it will stand up to "any scrutiny" but most cable operators are already putting this information in to a reporting database and can query who had what IP address and when with a one-line SQL statement. They may have to preserve this data longer that they are now. In your example assuming the DHCP client is well behaving (not always) then the IP address will be given up by the client on RELEASE. The issue is that most clients never RELEASE an IP address - the server ends up timing it out, and you hope the client plays nice. This is why most DHCP servers are handing out IP addresses in a least-recently-used manner so that you reduce the likelihood of conflicts and also the likelihood of an IP address being handed out again right after it was used like in your example.

Anyway, it isn't an exact science, but my guess is that in 99%+ of the cases they know exactly who was using an IP address and when and can automate the retrieval.
 

Re:That's Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so I'll just write a script that changes my mac every day. Now what?

Re:That's Everyone

[mlts]

You are assuming a judge has basic TCP/IP awareness. I can see the plaintiff/prosecution demanding charges against everyone whose MAC is stated in that minute of DHCP handshaking and the judge convicting/finding guilt on that, especially with the guilt/innocence being preponderance of evidence. It wouldn't be hard for a plaintiff to prove someone is more guilty than not if their MAC shows up during the time interval, especially if the plaintiff says that MAC addresses are easily forged/changed.

Re:That's Everyone

[tsm_sf]

To this you should add that you don't know the precision of clocks involved

I don't know why more people don't latch onto this point. It seems like one of the many obvious pitfalls in any law dealing with automatically generated data.

Just ask any admin if they'd guarantee 100% accuracy if they risked jail time for being wrong.

Re:That's Everyone

[TheDarkMaster]

Who makes the laws often do not know anything about the target of them.

Re:That's Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Given this data, please tell me which user had 192.168.0.74 at Sep 22 22:30...

That just made me realize something. What happens when the clocks don't match? The ISP gets a notice saying, "Somebody violated our IP at 22:30!" but it turns out it was actually happening at 22:35. Worse, what if the logs are off by a few minutes as well. The user in question was actually downloading at 22:35, the notice claims it happened at 22:40, and the network logs say the user disappeared at 22:32. What happens to the poor sap that got that IP at 22:37?

Re:That's Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Kalle did, ammirite?

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

p2p? aint that the shit that pollutes your harddrive with lame movies and music? i watch my shit online... xD

Re:lol

[somersault]

i watch my shit online

People put webcams in the strangest places.. and are clearly far too easily amused.

Impressive.

[Xest]

Or in other words, by this time next year, the media cartel with have lookup tables of every single consumer IP address owner in France, because for a population of 62 million, many of whom aren't online, or share an IP, that's all it'll take at the given rate.

Worse, because it'll be so costly for ISPs, they'll have more incentive to just assign a static IP per subscriber and create lookup tables themselves. Effectively this is the end of any amount of online privacy in France, if you connect to the net their, before long your IP and your name, phone number, home address, and e-mail address will be easily matched- what're the chances of such lookup tables staying secure and private indefinitely?

Something is going to go seriously wrong with this system one way or another, it's either going to kill off ISPs, or it's going to suffer torential backlash and be revoked, or in perhaps the worst case, it's going to make the online population of France the biggest target of tracking, identity theft, and scams in history.

Re:Impressive.

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Or maybe it will go Just As Planned and France will have to deal with the fact that privacy in their country is dead.

It's not like rich people can't simply buy a law that makes identity theft the victims fault, right?

Re:Impressive.

[CelticWhisper]

it's going to suffer torrential backlash

That's likely only to happen bit by bit though...

Re:Impressive.

[Antity-H]

At least free.fr already assigns a static IP for each of its "freebox" and an associated IPV6 /64 subnet. SFR/Neuf uses dynamic addresses for the moment no idea for the others.

However the news reports here say that at least one of the ISPs doesn't like to be asked about its clients. Since it must comply and provide the information because of the law it did so by printing the info to paper and sending the paper over.

Re:Impressive.

[Anonymous Coward]

anyway, most ISPs are just using static IP anyway (on DSL which is just the way people connect nowadays, while people are tearing the streets for FTTH); with one major exception, Orange, which is generally a PITA to work with anyway)

I wonder (too lazy to look up the CCTP) how they deal with IPv6 addresses though (they do deal with IPv6). Free does ipv6, with a /64 per subscriber...

Re:Impressive.

[TheNarrator]

This is what IPV6 is all about. Your globally unique biometric id in the lower 64 bits at all times you are online. Why the heck did you think they made the address space so absurdly huge?

Re:Impressive.

[fab13n]

No, it's not 62M / 150K per day. First, there's up to one connection per family, not one per individual. More importantly, some addresses will appear multiple times, some others will never appear. Finally, the 150K figure can't stay that high: after a while, either all the pirates will be disconnected, or they will have moved to safer pirating technologies, or the law will have been repelled as a resounding failure (the two last hypotheses aren't mutually incompatible).

A trivial problem

[bjourne]

The technology already exists for the ISP to resolve an IP address to a specific customer. How else would they be able to disable your access if you stop paying your internet bills? Blaming it on the technology being to hard and to costly is just weak. Whether it is a good idea to have private companies divulge private information about their customers to other private companies without going through the judicial process or not, is a different question altogether.

Re:A trivial problem

[somersault]

The technology already exists for the ISP to resolve an IP address to a specific customer. How else would they be able to disable your access if you stop paying your internet bills?

I think it's more likely they identify their customers by their phone number, and they assign an IP address after they verify that they're a current paying customer. Broadband IP addresses are often assigned via DHCP and so will be fairly random. They would have to check their DHCP logs to tell which customer was using which IP at which time.

Re:A trivial problem

[dave420]

ISPs often run massively complicated networks, sometimes from different companies they've bought over time. Knowing who was using an IP address at any given point in the last month is a very difficult thing to achieve, especially over complicated networks of different systems.

Re:A trivial problem

[Dan Dankleton]

For ADSL and similar services, cutting people off is generally* done by account name on the authentication server rather than IP address. Customers' IP addresses can change on a regular basis; their account name never does. Otherwise access is disabled by disabling the port which the customer connects to. It would be quite rare to disable access by blocking their IP.

* For "generally" read "always"

Re:A trivial problem

[zwei2stein]

Another service that needs to be developed, integrated, maintained and admined, have hw to run on? It gives ISP nothing except possiblity of loosing customer.

It is expensive. It can look like you can hack something like that overnight, but that is quite naive.

Hell, if it only cost 1$ it is still too expensive for ISP when net benefit is zero.

Re:A trivial problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there you go!
If you're the ISP's customer your mutual contract probably allows for disabling access for a number of reasons. One of them could be court orders or some judicial resolution, sure. But I seriously doubt that they can do it to comply with some blanket decision by - as you rightly point out - another private entity with no law enforcement rights (if they have them, something is terribly wrong).
And if you give these rights to copyright holders, why not extend them to anyone?
Can I register for copyright on some stupid thing I made and then go about doing this and collecting cheques from ISPs? Sounds like a pension plan, to me!

Re:A trivial problem

[Jaysyn]

I've had ADSL @ home for about 5 years now & my IP address, while dynamic, only seems to change when my ADSL modem dies & I get a new one.

Re:A trivial problem

[bjourne]

Absolutely. I never claimed that ISP:s mapped IP addresses directly to customer subscriptions! However, many ISP:s keep track of the MAC addresses of the devices that connects. Using that information, they can fairly easily look up the IP address in the DHCP logs, find the MAC address and from that find out the subscribers identity.

Re:A trivial problem

[nospam007]

"However, many ISP:s keep track of the MAC addresses of the devices that connects"

Mmmm, my router allows to change the MAC address, for ISP that don't track, so a utility to change the MAC address randomly a couple of times a day/hour would help?

Re:A trivial problem

[bjourne]

My router too. But the ISP redirects all traffic to their customer page unless I login and authorize that MAC address. Your MAC randomization would just cause a lot of trouble and would not circumvent their system.

Pirate Party

[Joce640k]

THIS is why I'm voting Pirate Party next time around.

I believe P2P is only hurting sales a few percent at most and this reaction is way out of proportion.

Re:Pirate Party

[cheekyjohnson]

"I believe P2P is only hurting sales a few percent at most"

More like not at all. That's like saying consumer choice is hurting sales because people can choose whether or not they will buy something.

Re:Pirate Party

[SuricouRaven]

I share this belief, based on Transformers 2 and Avatar. Both are targetted at the teenage-to-young-adult, male, technologically-inclined demographic. Prime piracy material. If any movie would be hurt by piracy, it would be those two. But T2 raked in huge profits even though critics universially loathe it, and Avatar broke every record worth breaking.

Re:Pirate Party

[Joce640k]

That's why I said "at most". The non-RIAA-sponsored studies actually find the opposite - the biggest downloaders are the biggest buyers.

I'm pretty sure it's not worth passing any new laws against P2P and that the biggest problem is the RIAA's business model, ie. most people don't listen to CDs/albums any more, they listen to mp3s/singles instead. How has the RIAA responded to this change in the market? It hasn't... (but the pirates have!)

Re:Pirate Party

[amentajo]

"I believe P2P is only hurting sales a few percent at most"

More like not at all. That's like saying consumer choice is hurting sales because people can choose whether or not they will buy something.

I hypothesize that there are some potential consumers that do not end up buying a digital media product, because they know how to get it for free via P2P, if they can afford the extra risk associated with doing this.

Given that this hypothesis is correct, then there is some amount of harm done to the gross revenues of copyright holders, more than "not at all". However, I do not believe that this group is as large as the group of those people who would not otherwise buy the product (maybe because they've never heard of it, are poor, have no credit card because they are young, etc.), and to whom P2P offers a way to experience that product.

I further believe that both of these groups combined are much smaller than the group of people who are not directly involved with P2P who will inadvertently be affected by Hadopi.

Re:Pirate Party

[Joce640k]

I just looked on amazon.com: Avatar Blu-Ray is #95 in sales ranking, Avatar DVD is #71.

Both were released six months ago (on April 22nd) and both are still in the top 100. I can't imagine that anybody who was going to pirate it hasn't already done so.

Re:Pirate Party

[cheekyjohnson]

"I hypothesize that there are some potential consumers that do not end up buying a digital media product, because they know how to get it for free via P2P, if they can afford the extra risk associated with doing this."

Let me give you a few examples that illustrate why this mindset is wrong (thinking that piracy should be illegal because it 'hurts sales').

"Let's say that someone buys some media from someone and doesn't like it, so they decide to tell all of their friends that were originally going to buy the media not to buy it because it is of poor quality in the eyes of the person who originally bought it. They decide not to buy it after their friend tells them not to. The artist(s), in this case, has just lost potential profit from actual potential clients. Both the informant and the previous potential clients have taken potential profit from the artist(s).

Let's say that a potential client of two businesses decides to go to one business to buy media instead of going to another business. This means that the second business that the potential client didn't go to has just had some of its potential profit stolen because the first business exists and because the potential client decided not to go to the second business. If either the first business had not existed or the potential client had gone to the second business, instead (which means the second business would have stolen potential profit from the first business), the second business would have had more money, which means both the first business and the potential client stole potential profit from the second business. Competition and consumer choice have harmed a legitimate business in this scenario, and potential clients were involved."

Not only can word of mouth sometimes hurt sales, but competition can as well. Pirates aren't actually doing any harm by copying data, as they didn't take anything (and no, profit that exists only in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist made more money can't be 'stolen').

Re:Pirate Party

[amentajo]

"Let me give you a few examples that illustrate why this mindset is wrong (thinking that piracy should be illegal because it 'hurts sales')."

I like your examples. They illustrate normal activities that probably cause a much greater impact to a particular company's gross revenues than piracy does, and it helps to put things into perspective. Having said that, it does not exactly prove that piracy does "no harm," and I would argue that the producers are indeed made worse off as a result of piracy, which I would define as a sort of "harm" caused to them :-)

In your first example, a person buys (!) media, then convinces N of their friends not to do the same, resulting in the company losing N potential customers. If this person had pirated that media instead (even though we know that they would otherwise have paid for it) and then convinced N of their friends not to buy it, then the company just lost N + 1 potential customers. The difference may be insignificant, but it is certainly non-zero.
The flip side of this example is that the person pirates that media, likes it, then buys it and convinces N of their friends to buy it too. That probably happens less often, though.

In your second example, a person makes the decision to buy their media from XYZ instead of ABC, and ABC loses 1 potential customer. In markets where the product is identical among all sellers, this is a little more relevant; in this instance, not so much. I can't (legally) get Microsoft Office, e.g., from anybody without Microsoft getting a share, so I really only have one "choice": pay Microsoft, or don't use Microsoft Office. If Microsoft charges too much for Microsoft Office, I might go to a competitor that offers a similar product like OpenOffice.org, but that's not the same thing.

Let me give my own example to illustrate when piracy might cause harm to one party, even when there are competitors offering a similar product. For this example, X is a rational consumer who needs office productivity software to do independent contract work, and OpenOffice.org (pretty good, and it's free) and Microsoft Office (better, but it costs $50) are the only two choices; for simplicity, assume that the cost for Microsoft to manufacture another copy of Microsoft Office is negligible (this doesn't change the general outcome of the situation), and Microsoft will not charge any more or any less than $50.
X would be a potential buyer of Microsoft Office if the value that it adds on top of OpenOffice.org is greater than the $50 difference in their licensing fees; let's say that in X's specific case, X would be able to finish a $1200 contract using Microsoft Office in the time that it would take to finish a $1000 contract using the same amount of effort.
X, a rational consumer, receives a marginal benefit of $150 ($1200 - $1000 - $50) buying Microsoft Office, and Microsoft, a rational producer, has a marginal benefit of $50 ($50 - $negligible, $0 for simplicity) to sell Microsoft Office. This transaction does not take place, however, when X pirates Microsoft Office and receives a marginal benefit of $200 ($1200 - $1000 - cost of pirating, $0 for simplicity), and Microsoft gets a marginal benefit of $0.
The only difference between the two scenarios is that X pirates Microsoft Office in one case, and purchases it in the other. Therefore, all of the differences in the outcomes of the two scenarios must be the result of the piracy. Value-added by piracy:

X: $200 - $150 = $50
Microsoft: $0 - $50 = -$50

Because of piracy, Microsoft is harmed by $50, and X is benefited by $50. I will count this as a loss for Microsoft, because X is a rational consumer and would pay Microsoft $50 to gain $200 if piracy were not an option.

Now, to illustrate when piracy might not cause any harm (which may or may not be what you're getting at), let's look at the same scenario with the only difference being that instead of $1200 for the Microsoft Office contract, it's $1020, (and we'll change X's name to Y).
Y w

Re:Pirate Party

[cheekyjohnson]

"Having said that, it does not exactly prove that piracy does "no harm,""

Those examples weren't meant to prove that. Those were meant to show how illogical it would be to make 'stealing' potential profit illegal. Piracy does no harm because it is simply illogical to state that someone can steal profit that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money. In order to harm them, something they already have must be taken.

"Because of piracy, Microsoft is harmed by $50"

That would only be true if the pirate physically stole money from them.

"because it's really hard to imagine a world where that can possibly be true."

This world, in fact, is such a world.

"and if piracy is prevalent enough, it can indeed create a situation where a producer no longer has enough incentive to create new innovative products, resulting in a net loss to society far greater than net gains from small-scale piracy."

No. That is not the fault of piracy, that is the fault of this illogical capitalistic society (which merely encourages greed, corruption, and selfishness). There exists a thing called free software, proving that worthless artificial currency is not needed for people to have incentive to create. It's just that in this current society which uses an artificial currency, they are indoctrinated to believe such. Piracy isn't the one doing the harm here.

Basically, it's illogical to state that you did harm to someone if you didn't actually take anything from them (and again, no, profit that only exists in the future of an alternate dimension where the artist/business made more money doesn't count). Besides that, the mere fact that consumers can choose to buy or not buy goods can put legitimate businesses out of business. Better get rid of consumer choice.

3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[Eivind Eklund]

There's 62277432 people in France, using the world bank 2008 estimate (See a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+france").

We generously assume that they have one Internet connection each.

With 150000 IP addresses warned every day, that's 50,000 people cut off every day (assuming the volume keeps up).

At that rate, it takes 1246 days to cut off everybody, which is fairly precisely 3.5 years.

Eivind.

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[am 2k]

At that rate, it takes 1246 days to cut off everybody, which is fairly precisely 3.5 years.

Not if the ISPs preempt that by crumbling and dying off like flies. Then it'll happen faster.

I'm glad this is happening somewhere other than my country first. If I'd be French, I'd look for some work that doesn't require any internet connection right now. Maybe McDonalds is hiring...

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[Anonymous Coward]

There is officially 20M dsl in France

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[bdunogier]

For the record, I think there are about 21 million DSL internet connections in france, more or less.

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[dachshund]

At that rate, it takes 1246 days to cut off everybody, which is fairly precisely 3.5 years.

I assume the copyright holders have a large backlog of IP addresses they've been collecting over the past months/years, which is why they're submitting at such a prodigious rate. One imagines that the set of "infringing ISP customers" in France represents only a small subset of the totality, so the rate will slow down. Yes, I realize that this is obvious and the whole thing is ridiculous, etc...

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[Animaether]

You make a lot of assumptions, though.. odds are it would be much less time.

You assume that the 62M all have internet connections, which you admit is rather generous. They don't, so the time would be cut down.. let's say it's maybe 40M, which is still pretty generous if I look at the age statistics, internet distribution, sharing of connections (2 adults in 1 household = 1 connection) etc.

However, you also assume that each and every one of them would be written to. Believe it or not, not -everybody- downloads stuff they have no explicit or implicit license to download.. so this would already change the time it would take into 'infinity'.. some people would simply never have to deal with this. But just for the sake of argument: this is where numbers get pulled out of orifices.. let's say 80% do, however... 32M.
Then you also assume that those who do, are caught.. looking around at people I know who download, I know several of them use proxies.. so those wouldn't have to deal with this either. Let's say that's a paltry 5%, so we're left with 30.4M.
Then you assume that those who are caught, and get their first warning, will turn it into a sport to get warning 2 the next day and be cut off on the 3rd day.. I guess some might do that on principle, but most people will just bow their head and clamor to their internet connection for general use more than their gotta-have-that-latest-movie fix. Say a third of the population does make it to Strike 3 for whatever reason. 10.1(3)M.

10.1(3)M / 0.15M/day = 67.(5)days or about 2 months + 2 days drop-off assuming that Strikes follow day-upon-day.. which also seems unlikely.. say there's at least 1 month between strikes, and it's closer to 4 months time in which all Contrefacteurs would be dealt with.

Seems rather speedy... where's the popcorn?

But then again.. orifice-numbers.

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[mapkinase]

I am starting to think more and more of France as the country with the most stupid lawmakers in Europe.

hadopi, veil ban, deportation of gypsies. That's 3 strikes for you, messieurs

Re:3.5 years until everybody in France is offline

[Issarlk]

Just the most supid government. Oh, and you forgot to add "ministers helping their millionaire buddies escape taxes"

Perspective

[airfoobar]

Ok, the US example isn't really putting anything into perspective. Here's a better way to do that.

France has a population of 60 million. If 150k letters are sent every day, then we get: 60,000,000 / 150,000 = 400. The entire population of France can be canvassed with Hadopi notices in a little more than a year.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that bullshit are far behind them now.

Re:Perspective

[Ecuador]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that bullshit are far behind them now.

You are overreacting, it's still there...

liberté - Copyright holders are free to get the IP's of everyone.
égalité - Notice "everyone" from above. Soon the entire citizen base of France will be equally harassed by copyright holders.
fraternité - Well, I am sure there will be more chance for the millions of harassed citizens to come together and share their woes in a brotherly fashion.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, better than this : population in France is 64 M, but there is not a single connection per person. There are also families who share a dsl.
There are only 20M dsl subscribers. 20M/150k = 134 days to cover all subscriber lines (a little more than 4 month).

And the trick in Hadopi is that accusation is not about copyright infrigment : its because of "not securing your connection" (i.e. if somebody use your WiFi, it's your responsibility and you must prove that you did'nt let it open).

For those who wonder how mutch it will cost to copyright holder : only the cost of scanning p2p. It's the job of hadopi entity to ask for identification. And the cost is not fixed today but there is a probability that it will cost the same as the cost for police enquiries (around 10$ per IP). Hadopi is en governemental entity so every french people will pay these enquiries. Majors have won all along the line : they will get the benefits but they won't pay the price.

Re:Perspective

[bidule]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that bullshit are far behind them now.

Actually, for the last 50 years, their motto has become Libertés, inégalités, fraternités. Which more or less means taking liberties, unfairness, unions. Once again they are going on strike because they want someone else to pay for their pension. Fighting the wrong fights, they are.

France, country of copyright thieves?

[Drakkenmensch]

The copyright holders will start relatively 'slowly' with 10,000 IP-addresses a day, but within weeks this number is expected to go up to 150,000 IP-addresses per day according to official reports.

150,000 names per day for a whole year is nearly 55 million names. Will the entertainment industry just skip on the rigmarole and simply do a class-action suit against the totality of the french population?

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Spad]

Well, it's between 18 & 55 million names - it's a 3 strikes law after all so not every request will be a new name.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[wvmarle]

No you see it wrong.

They need three strikes to disconnect a subscriber. Say on average three people sharing a connection (a typical household size, won't be much off for France), and assume every household has an Internet connection (that's a sure over-estimation of course), that makes just over 20 mln subscribers in France.

Now say all of them are involved in the regular illegal sharing of copyrighted material (another overestimation).

Three strikes means some 60 mln notices.

150k per (working) day, some 250 working days in a year, that means within two years time the complete ISP subscriber base has been warned three times and has been reported to the courts for further action.

So by the end of 2012, the complete French economy comes to a halt. The court system is fully overloaded, an dall ISPs are filing for bankruptcy for lack of any subscribers.

Now that would be fun.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Antisyzygy]

I definitely something along these lines will happen. What boggles my mind is why this law passed, it has to be unpopular with the French people. Apparently the government in France is even worse when it comes to self-interest and special-interest ball-suckery than the one here in the states.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[umghhh]

Well chances are then that judges award damages that are far beyond what French state can afford to pay which means they get nothing - better to go against single citizens - this makes (almost) everybody happy and part of the food chain :)

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, that would be the sole reason for us to bless our government: despite many strong promises for several years, there is no class-action in France.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[mauhiz]

There is no US-like class-action lawsuit in French law.
Also, the "entertainment industry" is actually quite fragmented, there are a lot of smaller groups which could not afford a proper lawsuit

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Drakkenmensch]

Yet they managed to pull together this monstrosity of an anti-consumer law. So you tell me how fragmented they really are.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Anonymous Coward]

no class-action suits in France. That was a promise from Chirac, which Sarkozy promised to hold, but in the way it was too inconvenient for the Fouquet's gang (the Neuilly buddies), so it ended up forgotten. Look! over there! a gypsy!

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[John Hasler]

Apparently the government in France is even worse when it comes to self-interest and special-interest ball-suckery than the one here in the states.

No, for a "developed nation" it's about average. This is what governments do.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Domini Canes]

So by the end of 2012, the complete French economy comes to a halt.

Hmmmm, time to short France's bonds....... Oh boy, it's gonna be fun

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Antity-H]

The current french president he tends to fire or harass people who don't agree with him. Add that he is a good friend of Martin Bouygues, his wife is a wannabe singer/actress/whatever and has connections all over the show biz having slept with half of them shake it and see what comes out :

- Ending of the most valuable publicity timeshare on public TV, TF1 stock rises 10% (Bouygue owns TF1)
- Hadopi paid with tax money earnings go to the copyright gangsters (includes Bouygues)
- Increase of the copyright tax on digital media (add €200 for 3TBytes yep you read that right anyone who lawfully buys a hard drive in France pays a tax to
copyright holders just in case that hard drive were used to store illegally obtained copyrighted materials)
- ...

There is a reason why he is called the "bling-bling" president.

And since he is also a paranoid maniac France now considers a law so the police has the right to read all your electronic correspondence (protect the children against pedophiles) without having to ask a court (snail mail and telephone are supposedly protected).

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[wvmarle]

Don't hold your breath, I don't think the French are stupid enough to actually let it come that far. But then, you never know...

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Antisyzygy]

If you are French I feel sorry for you. Looks like there is someone like Bush Jr. in office over there, although I bet the French president is smarter.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Magada]

No it doesn't. Most/all the people will only get the first e-mail, their personal data gets pwnt by the media corps and that's the end of that. A much smaller percentage will be made an example of.

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Anonymous Coward]

They basically did in Canada with the CD-R fee

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[Anonymous Coward]

the complete French economy comes to a halt. The court system is fully overloaded

Well, perhaps the overtime compensations for lawyers and the resulting spending will run the economy for a while.. ;)

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[wvmarle]

What irritates me most is that 1) they have a levy on empty media to pay for expected copyright infringement, and 2) they fine you when you actually use it for just that purpose.

Iirc there are some jurisdictions where this has been put straight (Canada?).

Re:France, country of copyright thieves?

[mauhiz]

They did not "pull it together".
Several big copyright holders demanded a solution, and one of them could convince a minister who started a state commission (directed by the PDG of FNAC, a French media and hi-fi retailer) mandated to review possibilities.
Those copyright holders might be worthless too, but they are still different from MPAA, and France is a very different country from the USA.

After the Romani people..

[Anonymous Coward]

The second hit of the sarko-na-zy regime.. welcome to égalité, liberté et fraternité..

Realistically though...

[Joce640k]

It's not the ISPs who'll suffer - they can automate the process - it's the court system.

I'd love to see 150,000 court cases brought every day, all for downloading a couple of mp3s but the sad fact is that most cases won't go much further than sending a letter or two.

Re:Realistically though...

[durrr]

They'll bake them together in batches of one million unsoved requests, and do the court run once a month
1mil * 1500 *30 = €45 billion.

Now if anyone here doesn't realize the law was written entirely by copyrigth interest groups then just look at that number again, no on bothers to throw around fantasy sums like that except for the US goverment or the entertainment copyright lobby.

Re:Realistically though...

[Nursie]

Court? Why would they bother involving a court? This is a rule bought by or for big media, they don't want to have to spend money on lawyers.

No, there will be no courts involved. Three strikes and you're just SOL.

Re:Realistically though...

[xtracto]

According to one of the comments in TorrentFreak, one ISP (presumably called "Free") started sending the data on identified ISPs in paper.

I really hope French people stand against this.

Re:Realistically though...

[Animaether]

I'd love to see 150,000 court cases brought every day, all for downloading a couple of mp3s but the sad fact is that most cases won't go much further than sending a letter or two.

presuming that downloading those mp3s was not authorized... ...isn't "won't go much further than sending a letter or two" exactly the intent of the three strikes model? Those two letters being the first two strikes? If it does go further than that, it's Strike 3 and the court actually -should- come into play if that strike is contested. ( I'm more curious about if/how one might contest Strike 1, though. )

Re:Realistically though...

[mlts]

They will do what the Hurt Locker law firm did in the US, and try thousands of people in one court case. "Of course, since the ISP provided the names, they must be guilty." will be the main argument, and I wonder how many judges will not automatically find guilt just based on that alone. I am cynical and think quite few.

Re:Realistically though...

[HuguesT]

Every deconnection case will have to be decided by a judge, according to the law. This was a last-minute arrangement, brought upon because the French equivalent to the supreme court said any other way would be tantamount to (1) guilty-until-proven-innocent and (2) the executive power taking on judicial powers too.

Re:Realistically though...

[HuguesT]

There is no way to contest strike 1 and 2 at present, unless one installs of one's own volition some government spyware program that doesn't exist yet, meant to show that only legit traffic goes through the line.

Re:Realistically though...

[Nursie]

Well colour me surprised.

I suppose it is the French though, and they do have at least a minor inclination to support consumer and worker rights.

Dear companies,

[nkh]

Dear SACEM and record companies selling stuff in France,

Because of the HADOPI law and the way you treated your potential customers for the past years, because of the fact that I have to pay a "copyright" tax on every blank media I buy, and because I've been offered a guitar, I'm pissed off to the point I'll do something tangible in my life.

TV has already been replaced mostly by books, tabletop games, and a few YouTube videos every other week. As for music, I'm learning the guitar, I don't need you anymore, I won't give you my money anymore, it's over, I'll make my own music and entertain my family by myself.

Also, fuck you...

Re:Dear companies,

[takev]

Please don't forget to pay for the right to entertain your family with your music, it is very likely (actually mathematically certain) that you infringe on part (one beat of musical passage is enough these days) of a copyrighted song.

Re:Dear companies,

[nkh]

This is the part that makes me cringe. Music theory is mostly chords and scales glued together, a bit like software patents. I can't believe that copyright can still be used up to 70 years after an author's death.

Re:Dear companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

...because I've been offered a guitar, I'm pissed off to the point I'll do something tangible in my life.

Just a slight edit: Drop the line above and use this snippet below.
<snip>
I'm pissed off to the point I'll do something tangible with my life, so i have bought a pair of leather pants and a CASIO keyboard.
</snip>

That will really fuck them.

Re:Dear companies,

[Jaysyn]

Good on you!

Re:Dear companies,

[nkh]

Thank you! I don't plan to be the next Hendrix, or make money out of it, but I will practice hard. Even though I've only been playing the guitar for a month, I already have a lot of fun (and my wife and her father both know the guitar well enough to help me, what more could I ask for?)

Re:Dear companies,

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking you were going to tell them you're going to bomb them.
Damn, dreamed right there for a second :P

Re:Dear companies,

[John Hasler]

You'll pay for your sheet music, right? And you will be careful to perform only for very small family groups?

Or perhaps you could simply listen to the radio...

20 Years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the French have to step it up a bit if they really want to fully protect all copyrighted stuff on the net. At 10,000 IP addresses per day it will take almost 20 years to make the population of ~60m all pay. I mean, even if people aren't actively torrenting, odds are that they have a desktop wallpaper that they don't have rights for, or saved a pic they found on reddit or some other site, plus I'm sure there has to be some copyrighted material in their browser cache (because most people don't really clear those that often). After all, fair use means you can fairly use it if you pay the man, right. //sarcasm
 

Media cartel don't get the ID

[AwaxSlashdot]

They provide the IP to an intermediary state run service (named HADOPI). This service requests the ID and send the warnings and ask to close the connection at the 3rd occurence.

So media cartel don't get the final user iD.

Re:Media cartel don't get the ID

[Anonymous Coward]

And no-one will be able to hack the database, because all government-run computer databases are perfectly secure.

And there's no chance at all that anyone might be able to bribe a government worker to get a copy of the database either.

ISPs will love this

[Ogive17]

ISPs will enjoy their sales dropping by 30% after a year due to this law and people getting their internet disconnected. Not only that, they have to provide the information that will result in the lost sales.

Re:ISPs will love this

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think the customers who get disconnected will get to stop paying their bills to the ISP?

Re:ISPs will love this

[Antisyzygy]

I hope for another French revolution.

Re:ISPs will love this

[kangsterizer]

When you get disconnected you are required to keep on paying the bill.

Re:ISPs will love this

[Ogive17]

Only for the length of the contract if there was one. They can't make you pay if they aren't providing a service and there is no contract.

I'm not sure what is common in France (or Europe in general) but in the US you typically have to do a 1 or 2 year agreement at the beginning, once you have done that you're on a month to month contract and can cancel at any time.

Re:ISPs will love this

[kangsterizer]

Hadopi is a law, and adds a special case:

You have to pay for the duration of the hadopi suspension of service, which can be from memory from 3 to 6 month.

If you don't know what it is like in France, why do you post it's wrong o.O you may NOT cancel when suspended by hadopi, it's that simple

In other news

[Zoxed]

In other news VPN providers in France reporting record profits :-)

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

We prefer VPN providers from country around France, as VPN providers in France are supposed to comply to HADOPI too.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

More like "VPN providers in Germany, England and the Netherlands". You would choose some location that is well connected, near you and _outside_ HADOPI's jurisdiction, of course.

One of the ISPs is having fun

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free" (name of a french ISP) is sending the informations via paper mail, one sheet per request, to slow down the whole process.

Re:One of the ISPs is having fun

[tincho_uy]

They should print the data as captchas, so they can't just OCR the results...

Re:One of the ISPs is having fun

[EkriirkE]

Use a handwriting and/or "ransom note" font on recycled unbleached paper

On related news,

[Anonymous Coward]

the number of french I2P and Freenet nodes seem to be growing every day.

Thanks HADOPI :3~

Re:On related news,

[Issarlk]

Hadopi could be remembered in the future as an important boost to online privacy for net users :)

the untied states (sic)

[circletimessquare]

had an early lead in internet douchebaggery, but in recent times the antipodean aussies made a stunning breakthrough in online dirtbag status. but its nice that the latest reigning champions of sleazy network manipulation has come to roost with the eurotrash

Re:Warehouse 13!

[TaoPhoenix]

"Only two guys made it through to commenting, and one lost his way."

Dear French voters

[fnj]

You signed up for a filthy corrupt fascist regime. This is the shit that comes with it. Enjoy.

Re:Dear French voters

[Antisyzygy]

The US is only marginally better. It wont be long before something equally intrusive and anti-freedom happens here. The entertainment industry needs to get put in their place GLOBALLY.

Re:Dear French voters

[bdunogier]

No need to remind me about it, as far as I'm concerned. Even though this clearly wasn't my vote...

Amen to that.

Re:Dear French voters

[fnj]

Marginally better? I would say it's even worse.

Re:Dear French voters

[Antisyzygy]

Well, in regard to this issue. We don't have a three strikes law. I am not fond of the US government either. Nothing every happens that benefit its people (unless you make over 200000 a year). Im not suggesting a wellfare state as here in the South we have a big problem with freeloaders buying shit for themselves when their kids starve and wear rags most the time. It would be nice to have a government that is more interested in its people doing well rather than the size of paychecks for Executives.

Re:Dear French voters

[fnj]

That WOULD be nice. Has there ever been one?

Re:Dear French voters

[toutankh]

Well only half of them signed up for this filthy regime, that's the problem with democracy...

Agreed, the 53% who voted for it get what they deserve - the problem is, the remaining 47% also get what the first 53% deserve.

US Judge is an idiot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Time warner only had to provide 28 a day due to the immense amount of work?

LOL. Time Warner sure snowed him. This is what it takes for them to find the info:

1) Get IP Address, date/time
2) Look up on DHCP server servicing that address for MAC address matching the IP. Verify that the lease for that IP was correct for the date/time in question. If not, check DHCP logs.
3) Use MAC address in billing system to search. The Cablemodems are identified in the system by it's MAC address - that's how they can do remote resets and push configs to them. They also have an internal-only IP address assigned to each cablemodem - also searchable based on MAC address in the billing system.
4) Get account info.

At best, would take a couple of mins per IP. At worst, a couple of hours (if needing to search through DHCP logs.

Man, that judge was a tard.

My neighbor is toast

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least until he unplugs my free WiFi :(.

Sad

[Jaysyn]

It's sad to think that even when a country goes thru the trouble of killing all of their nobles, they just end up making new ones eventually.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame it on the Christian faith. Even if you manage to kill God for a while, it always pops up again like that annoying Orazaephilus surinamensis in your kitchen. The same pattern repeats for nobles..

So, basically...

[John Pfeiffer]

The copyright holders have banded together and found a way to destroy the internet in their country? By forcing nigh-impossible requests onto the ISPs and then fining them all into bankruptcy as they fail to keep up with the requests?

That's... That's fucking genius. :o

Soon this law will be useless

[Delgul]

Projects like http://freenetproject.org/ will be very very popular soon in France I guess.

Solutions like this provide:
- Encryption
- Anonymity
- Credible deniability
- Darknets

These kind of solutions do not work very fast at the moment because of the limited number of users. There was never really the need. Now there is and people will flock to it in big numbers. As the number of users start to rise, it will become very big, very fast.

Two years from now they will be in exactly the same spot, except they will not even be able to track the problem anymore. A bit of ironic justice I guess...

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[dk90406]

France has strict laws regarding encryption. So good luck with that.

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[SuricouRaven]

That's trivial to get around. All they need to do is say that freenet harbors pedophiles (The first time this claim has actually been truthful) and every ISP will want to block it.

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[bdunogier]

Encrypted VPNs are getting very, very successful thanks to HADOPI. Perfect demonstration of how a law can lead people to giving money to russian mafia I guess ;-)

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[Ash-Fox]

That's trivial to get around. All they need to do is say that freenet harbors pedophiles (The first time this claim has actually been truthful) and every ISP will want to block it.

How do you block Freenet? Seriously, how do you block it and not other services?

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[mrogers]

How do you block Freenet? Seriously, how do you block it and not other services?

If Freenet is banned, the government can collect the address of every "opennet" Freenet node in a matter of hours. Then it's a question of finding the "darknet" nodes. A simple heuristic will probably catch most of them: recursively look for any address that has at least three long-lived, encrypted, two-way UDP streams to known or suspected Freenet nodes. The standard of proof at this stage is probable cause (or the French equivalent), rather than overwhelming evidence, so a heuristic approach is good enough. Wholesale traffic interception isn't needed: it's sufficient to monitor known or suspected nodes.

Now the government raids the owners of all the French nodes, confiscates their hard drives and decrypts their Freenet caches. There's bound to be some nasty stuff cached there on behalf of other nodes, even if the owners never uploaded or downloaded anything bad. The government charges the owners with "running a Freenet node" (so it's not necessary to prove what they uploaded or downlaoded) and makes a highly public announcement that it busted an extensive child porn / terrorist / neo-Nazi network thanks to the new anti-Freenet law. Then it waits for the handful of node operators it didn't catch to shut down their nodes and never say the word "Freenet" again.

Part of the problem here is that Freenet's design requires all nodes to belong to a single network, so if you have a heuristic for identifying Freenet traffic you can start from any node and 'unravel' the whole network. But to be fair to the Freenet designers, the alternative - lots of small, isolated darknets - isn't very appealing to users, because the only people you end up communicating with belong to the small intersection of "people I trust" and "privacy nuts". I'm a privacy nut who trusts his friends, and even for me that intersection isn't large enough to make for much of a conversation.

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[John Hasler]

Opaque proxies and deep packet inspection.

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[Eunuchswear]

Yes, the laws are extremely strict here:

Current state of the law

The use of cryptography is free, according to article 30(I) of the law No. 2004-575 of 21 June 2004 for the trust in the digital economy (Loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique).

Source http://rechten.uvt.nl/koops/cryptolaw/cls2.htm

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Another project is http://www.torproject.org/
Let the challenge begin ;)

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[SuricouRaven]

"How do you block Freenet? Seriously, how do you block it and not other services?" Connect. Get node IPs. Add to blacklist and filter at the ISP boundries. That's the opennet side killed. If anyone objects, just accuse them of supporting pedophiles. Never fails. Could still darknet it, but now at the point where downloading piratestuff takes so many hours of work, it's just not worth the effort. Mrogers provides the details, but it wouldn't take as much effort as he proposes. The objective isn't to completly kill freenet - it's to render it so unreliable, so time-consuming and so slow that pirates give up and just go buy the blu-ray. Alternatively, just pick a node at random and destroy the owner. Charge him with posession of child pornography, and make sure that his picture is in all the papers. Even if nothing can be proven, his life is ruined - he will be universially hated, and unable to even leave his house without risking assault. Once word gets around, no sane person will dare run a freenet node for years. Now, WASTE, on the other hand... *thats* one that would be hard to take down! But that's because it's confined to small islands of connectivity - you can only share with those you trust, so for it to work you need to have a few pirate friends as well, and even then selection will be more limited.

Re:Soon this law will be useless

[Ash-Fox]

Opaque proxies and deep packet inspection.

Freenet is designed to work around that.

Not 10K a day yet

[bdunogier]

This article deserves some more details.

TMG, the company tracking P2P downloaders, has so far requested the identification of 800 IP addresses, not 10K yet. You should be amused to know that one of our ISPs has sent the names by fax on a piece of paper, since they have no obligation to send an electronic version.

On a global scale, things aren't as bright as the government says. What is actually condemned by HADOPI isn't downloading copyrighted material; the process they were looking wasn't accepted with such an approach. Instead, they will condemn the lack of security on people's internet connections. Of course, no proper way to secure your internet access exists yet, but a call for offer has been published month ago, asking for software projects. These security apps will basically monitor "illegal" downloads, and keep them in a secure logfile the user shouldn't be able to temper with. We are still waiting.

About the identification process cost, it has been decided that nobody would pay for it. Except us customers of course. The cost for such an ID is evaluated to 7 to 10 euros.

This whole thing basically is a very, very big mess, and most of us think that this can't really work, and that the ultimate goal is to implement DPI at ISP level in order to completely block illegal downloads.

that's why I cancel the direct debit

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why I cancel the direct debit. After one ISP continued to take for three months after the end of contract and then stalled for three more before paying back, I ALWAYS cancel before the due date of the last bill and then pay by post.

If they start asking for charges for asking I'll start charging for the postage...

Please disconnect them all

[airfoobar]

I want a significant percentage of the population to lose their internet connections, I want them to be pissed off and I want to see the digital economy realise what a totally useless abomination Hadopi is. I want them all to point their fingers at that loser Sarkozy and the "entertainment" industry who pushed this through despite all the warnings, and I want them both to be thrown out of power and out of France.

Here's to wishing..

4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[thijsh]

Sorry for the self-reply, I made a mistake... It's 150.000 per *day*, not per month! I actually calculated it right the first time and thought: "wait, that can't be right, I probably switched days and months...". Nope, I did that by mistake after that... So sadly the real calculation is:
150.000 IPs per day = 13,5 million households in 90 days = 3 months!!! So assuming the they have a lot more broadband connections since 2008 it would be around 4 months!

in just 4 months the media company will already own the personal details of *all* French households with internet!!!

Fuck, how crazy are they! The 21st century French revolution is pretty much guaranteed if people are screwed over by the millions at this pace.

Re:4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[HuguesT]

No they wont. They can only request ISP numbers of people who connect to torrents feed of French media companies contents.

The net effect of this is rather that no one will soon download anything made by French artists. They are shooting themselves in the foot big time.

Re:4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[thijsh]

Hardly, they can already request the details on the 'suspicion' of infringement. With wording like that it would amaze me if it requires substantial proof other than "we detected this IP, look it's in the list". That is something that *will* happen when no court is required to approve the request, there is a reason things should work like that. They see it as cumbersome, we see it as legally required protection against blatant abuse.

Re:4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[Anonymous Coward]

They will receive an e-mail, figure that after all, its true, they did do something illegal, stop downloading content for fear of the dreaded letter that might be caused by a guest using their wireless.

There is something funny too, legally speaking, they don't punish for intellectual property reasons, but for "failing to secure your home network". Many public service sites have been unofficially audited, and the results were apauling.

Which is why its so important for HADOPI to send so many letters so fast, because it wont stand a chance once people get annoyed, but its reasonable to expect that it wont be dismantled within 4 months or so (stalling administration), and that the fear will have a great effect for our out-of-time-media-overlords.

Re:4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[yakovlev]

The entire IPv4 address space is around 4 Billion addresses. At 150,000 per day, they will cover the entire IPv4 address space in around 27,000 days, which is only 73 years.

By contrast, the population of Europe is a relatively modest 731 million. At that rate, they could have the entire population of Europe in about 13 years.

150,000 IPs per day is RIDICULOUS, and a real burden on the ISPs. Something like $5 per IP is extremely reasonable and would reduce this to a sensible rate.

Re:4 months of Carte blanche = Game Over

[c-reus]

Is there some kind of requirement to provide actual proof that an IP address connected to a torrent feed? The manpower required to check the evidence simply does not exist, so they are pretty much free to say "we suspect the owners of the following IP addresses", followed by thousands of addresses.

I call BS on that law. And on the filesharers.

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

This law is retarded.
So is the tax that the french pay on CD/HDD to compensate for artists losses.
So is a lot of filesharing/copyright "protection" enforcement.

But let's not forget it's illegal to download a song or movie you didn't pay for.
Yes, I know, movie studios are producing movies without scenarios, music labels are abusing artists, blah blah blah. We've heard this before.

But is "ok let's download their stuff, that will teach'em a lesson" the appropriate response? Really? I fail to see the logic here. I'd much rather punish them as consumers usually do, by not buying their sh*t. Not by "stealing" from them (yes, that's stealing, even if bits aren't really tangible (well, they are, but you know what I mean)).


Yes, I am aware this post will be modded down into oblivion as "music and movies, just like information, want to be free".

Re:I call BS on that law. And on the filesharers.

[zombieChan51]

Exactly what was going through my mind.

If I could mod you up I would. But as an alternative I give you a thumbs up.

Re:I call BS on that law. And on the filesharers.

[Antity-H]

Didn't they pay for it when they bought the media ? I mean since there is tax to compensate artists losses ...

Re:I call BS on that law. And on the filesharers.

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

That's the thing. That French tax is really retarded, as you "compensate" artists (or their union, really, it does not even go to the right people), but it still doesn't make it legal for you to burn that CD or hold their MP3's on your hard drive!


Not to mention that companies which must consume a lot of HDDs (and CDs a few years back) actually pay for that BS. That law is the stupidest law ever designed.

Re:I call BS on that law. And on the filesharers.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you pay taxes to compensate artist losses.. then French people are already paying for the things they download... so how can it be they are culprit of not paying for the music they are all paying. isnt it a contradiction?

Note: Im not an Anonymous Coward, just a Lazy Anonymous.

Stop the math, you're wrong

[Seb C.]

150k IPs a day does not mean they'll have 150k new IP each day. I'd rather bet it's the same old IPs from download going from one day to another (hey, those divx are HUGE ;-) ).

Besides, not everyone goes emule or p2p. So, they won't have everyone listed.

Just 2 more things to tell about it :
1) The main effect of this is that everyone wanting to keep on with their illegal activities will jump on the foreing VPN provider. That will cost them, but "hey, now i'm paying 10 bucks a month, i'll have no remorse downloading tons of those illegal material". i'd rather say it'll give money to those private provider and finally tears people that were buying to the cartels from time to time (for the price of a spotify account, i can now have films, music and warez, without being annoyed...)
2) Every other ISP in France offer a free bandwidth sharing for the people within the same ISP circle. I.e. say i'm a ISP A client, i can connect to wifi hotspots everywhere ISP A has a client with a box up and running. Point is : who is to know it was me or somebody in the street using my internet access ? (but maybe this is biaised and ISP have a mean to know)

my .2 french cents of euro

Re:Stop the math, you're wrong

[bdunogier]

2) Every other ISP in France offer a free bandwidth sharing for the people within the same ISP circle. I.e. say i'm a ISP A client, i can connect to wifi hotspots everywhere ISP A has a client with a box up and running. Point is : who is to know it was me or somebody in the street using my internet access ? (but maybe this is biaised and ISP have a mean to know)

my .2 french cents of euro

If somebody uses your internets to download copyrighted material, YOU are blamed, not the hacker / friend / child of yours. The connection's owner is the one who's blamed for not securing their internets. That's the beauty. Oh, it is also interesting to know that the email / mail you will get will never mention what files you are accused of having downloaded. It's a bit like automatic speeding radars, but you don't know how fast you were going.

Re:Stop the math, you're wrong

[Seb C.]

yeah, i know that. The point is, that if tha law has taken shortcuts to catch someone to blame, there may be position where you can't really secure your access no matter what. Knowing that, i personnally would consider the law un-applicable.
Not to mention the obligation to use WEP secured (hum) wifi to be able to connect a nintendo DS, for instance...

People of the USA

[thegarbz]

People of the USA now is our time to shine. Brothers I call you to arms for now is the moment when we can truly shout across the internet that we as a nation are no longer the most fucked up country around!

Re:Gavel

[TaoPhoenix]

We need some art on that. To be efficient, the judge wouldn't just drop the gavel and then waste time *looking* for the next case. It would be all lined up, maybe on some kind of assembly line or server.

Let me add an Insightful link to what that those trials would sound like complete with advise to noisy courtroom spectators.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9698TqtY4A&feature=related

2 out of 3 is pretty good!

[swb]

Banning the hijab makes sense as does the gypsy expulsion.

Re:2 out of 3 is pretty good!

[nospam007]

Really? What's a gypsy? European states have no ethnic data in their papers, they are either French, Romanian, Hungarian or some other EU country and all those are free to establish themselves in any country they like.

They can deport them as often as they want, they just come back the day after and there's no way to identify them.
They don't have a yellow star on their clothes. If they don't wear long skirts and play the violin they look like any other guy or girl.

Re:2 out of 3 is pretty good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? What's a gypsy? European states have no ethnic data in their papers, they are either French, Romanian, Hungarian or some other EU country and all those are free to establish themselves in any country they like.

They can deport them as often as they want, they just come back the day after and there's no way to identify them. They don't have a yellow star on their clothes. If they don't wear long skirts and play the violin they look like any other guy or girl.

You Godwinned yourself just right now, but I will still try to explain: the obession about gypsies everywhere in the developed world is not about race but about antisocial behaviour.

Observe the following three characteristics: (1)nomadic lifestyle that keeps children out of education, (2)continued welfare dependence, (3)chronic incidence of petty crime. See how they are not compatible with the 'golden rule' or any other rule a society might be based on. Then deport. Whether you call them 'gyppo', 'traveller', 'criminal trailer trash' or 'dirty hippie' doesn't matter -- the antisocial behaviour does.

Re:2 out of 3 is pretty good!

[AK Marc]

They don't have a yellow star on their clothes.

No, they should be given a black triangle, and if that doesn't suit you, you could change it to a brown triangle. I'm surprised that someone who so casually tosses out a reference like that can't even be bothered to get the shape and color right. Unless they were Jewish Gypsies. Hmm, I wonder what they'd do for a liberal gay Jehovah's Witness Gypsy of Jewish descent (which is rhetorical, as they had some system for combinations, I just can't be bothered to learn or care).

Unbelievable isnt it. accusation without proof.

[unity100]

you come up accusing someone, saying they 'stole' your property, but, you dont need to prove it. accusation is enough. the burden of proof, doesnt lie on the shoulders of the accuser as it should. it lies on the shoulders of the accused. not only that, but the accuser can come up accusing with its OWN records, with no verifiable proof that those records are genuine.

morondom.

Formally copyright the bait

[geek2k5]

Go the additional step and formally copyright the files, complete with payment to the appropriate copy right agency. That allows you to sue for damages if Hollywood decides to use your content in a professional remake.

Choose right wing, get your fix.

[unity100]

there is no case in which electing a right wing government (even if center) did not end up in such a violation of rights and repression of public case in the last decade, ANYWHERE in the world.

yet morons still keep electing them. or, in some cases, right wing governments 'reelect' themselves.

Re:Choose right wing, get your fix.

[JohnnyGTO]

Ya our leftist government is working so well for us.

Re:Choose right wing, get your fix.

[unity100]

leftist ?

if you are talking about usa, i would like to let you know that an ENTIRE government bureaucracy and ruling elite, shaped and forced to be right wing for 80 years, do not just instantly turn left wing with just electing a left wing president. machine, is as strong as the man that runs it. if machine resists, man cannot do anything. and vice versa.

Re:Choose right wing, get your fix.

[shutdown -p now]

there is no case in which electing a right wing government (even if center) did not end up in such a violation of rights and repression of public case in the last decade, ANYWHERE in the world.

As opposed to?...

I mean, UK Labour Party weren't exactly rightist, but their list of conquests over the citizens' freedoms puts Bush junior to shame. And now we see a coalition where right Conservatives dominate dismantling their police state.

Ultimately, left/right is primarily an economic distinction, and both sides have folk who will gladly abuse state powers to suppress citizenry. It's a whole different dimension.

Re:Choose right wing, get your fix.

[unity100]

there is a distinction. uk labor party is the only 'exception' that can be made, yet still it isnt an exception in any case. in uk, just like u.s., there is a long formed right wing government that exists in bureaucracy and governance. even if the government is left wing, its impact becomes lessened and lessened and subverted. just like how left wing obama is accomplishing right wing things in usa. similarly, in japan, regardless of what orientation your government would be, the end result would shape into whatever established bureaucracy shapes them to be.

HADOPI equivalent for people cooking at home?

[Anonymous Coward]

When are they going to go after those pesky home cookers?
Cooking at home clearly kills the restaurant business, and they're clearly infringing on their recipes!

Re:HADOPI equivalent for people cooking at home?

[SuricouRaven]

Actually, recipes can be copyrighted in some places. I do not recall any home cookers being sued, but cookbook publishers have been.

And in other news

[JohnnyGTO]

after six months of Hadopi law every know French IP address has dropped off the Internet. Official are confused and worried some speculating that the entire country of France may have been stolen by aliens. Others argue that they all just found something better to do, a little wine, some bread, a pretty girl...

Strike!

[Beorytis]

All the ISPs should band together and collectively disconnect, claiming the burden of 'infringer' user data requests has put them out of business.

Personally, I am OK with this.

[master_p]

In my belief, copying of digital material created by others is theft, because it means lost revenue for the creators.

I know most people think otherwise, but in opinion, they are not correct: effort must be rewarded. We can't grab whatever we want, without compensating the creator.

(honest opinion, not flamebait)

Re:Personally, I am OK with this.

[cdrguru]

I agree with you, but we have to look at reality. Reality now is that it is all for free and there is no way to turn off the tap.

One person in Romainia or Bulgaria can buy a movie download with a stolen credit card, strip any attached DRM and post it for the rest of the world to download. They can do this from a web site that gets plenty of traffic and keep themselves going on ad revenue alone. Multiply this by 10,000 or so and it is all for free (ad supported courtesty of Google), all the time. There isn't any way of stopping it.

In the US we have maybe 40-50% of the population that does not have access to high speed Internet. Because of this they can't download music or movies and are actively supporting the media companies with their purchases. The rest of the population of the USA is either actively downloading or uninterested. A lot of the people downloading are younger, regardless of their income status. What this likely means for the future is that as the people without access and without interest (or knowledge about downloading) die off the revenue will steadily decrease for media companies.

We have grown up a generation that pretty much believes there is no reason not to download for free. Most of the people of my generation don't know anything about downloading stuff and wouldn't have any way to get started.

I think France is fighting a tidal wave with a teacup. They are going to be washed away.

Re:Personally, I am OK with this.

[Pranadevil2k]

It's only lost revenue if the person making the copy would have bought it. If they never had an intention of making a purchase, there was no potential for revenue gain to begin with.
As an example, say that you hear a song on the radio (which is free!) and you decide to check out the band. Their CD is $20 and has 9 songs you've never heard, plus the one you liked. You decide you won't buy the CD. Instead, you get a tape deck and record the song off the radio the next time you hear it. Now you can listen to the song whenever you want, and have managed to do nothing illegal. Replace the tape deck with a computer that downloaded the song you liked.... and suddenly you've done something illegal. There's no functional difference between the two scenarios, so why is one legal but the other isn't?

Re:Personally, I am OK with this.

[shutdown -p now]

Personally, I'm pro-copyright (though limited terms!), and I'm absolutely not okay with this or any other similar "N strikes" law. The crucial problem with them all is that they pretty much piss all over the "innocent unless proven guilty" and "due process" legal principles, which have been the cornerstones of the rule of law for centuries now.

If they can narrow down on one particular guy and prove, with reasonable certainty (since we're talking about civil cases here) that he downloaded or uploaded a specific number or works, or up to a certain number of works - sure, go ahead, sue him and argue it in the court, and collect the damages (and any punitive fines) that you're entitled to ... if you win. Basically what RIAA/MPAA do in US today, except that penalties are way overboard. Aside from their size though, it's okay. But "three strikes"? Strike it down, and tar and feather politicians who voted it in, because they are the enemies of the free society.

Internet2 and universities

[rs1n]

What is their definition of an ISP? Does a university essentially qualify, too, since they give out IPs and internet access to the students who live on campus?

Also, I can't help but wonder what sort of effect this will have with respect to creating a "new internet" (we already have Internet2 for government and research purposes). The current state of the internet right now sucks anyway. Maybe all of this will spur the evolution of the internet into something much better once people realize that they have to put up with too much crap with the current internet.

Some other things to know about Hadopi...

[Anonymous Coward]

In random order:

-In fact, it's not the illegal download that is punished, but the lack of security of the connection (thus creating an obligation of result in web security), as a workaround to the fact that the IP doesn't prove that the owner of the connection is guilty
source: http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/57100-negligence-caracterisee-securisation-hadopi-hadopi.htm/]

-The procedure will be the same as the one for driving misbehavior (radar, fee, etc.), ie for stuff 'that are simple and evident, thus shouldn't need a trial'
source : http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/06/18/1452-hadopi-2-le-gouvernement-envisage-le-recours-a-l-ordonnance-penale/

-If you want to contest : there are no action class in France

-Later on, the gov may do DPI (Deep packet Inspection)
source : http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/56726-dpi-deep-packet-inspection-hadopi.htm/

-Around 10,000 titles will be watched, and is should be half old, classic (= Michael Jackson, etc.), half recent files

Re:Some other things to know about Hadopi...

[shutdown -p now]

All three links in GP's post are broken by trailing slashes. Here's the working links:

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/57100-negligence-caracterisee-securisation-hadopi-hadopi.htm
http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/06/18/1452-hadopi-2-le-gouvernement-envisage-le-recours-a-l-ordonnance-penale
http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/56726-dpi-deep-packet-inspection-hadopi.htm

US has the best judicial system on the planet

[Cheech Wizard]

Sounds nice, but what the US founding fathers wrote and intended are not reality in the US today (if they ever truly were). To say the US has the best judicial system on the planet is, at best, wishful thinking. Can you say "extraordinary rendition"? That is, of course, the extreme, but even in everyday life for the "every day Joe" it's not much different. Police can hold you as long as they want unless you're really rich and 'connected' (in short unless you can afford a really good lawyer).

Re:US has the best judicial system on the planet

[SuricouRaven]

And in addition, if they can't convict you of what they wish, then there is sure to be some other law you violated that investigations will uncover. Tax evasion is a classic for that one. I imagine copyright infringement could take it's place in future. Everyone has done *something* illegal.

Static IPs

[psydeshow]

On the bright side, it will be dead easy to get a static IP address in France, now.

No more DHCP, that adds way too much administrative overhead.

Voice

[AwaxSlashdot]

You could send an audio file with the IP and the identification read aloud by voice synthesis.

The file itself could sent printed in hexa using 16 different dingbat characters for each possible value to prevent OCR.

It will be about a year

[ThatsNotPudding]

before the smoldering ruins where this operation was located will start to be referred to as Bastille 2.0

Dear french people,

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear french people,

Please remove that crappy politicians from office before the Germans do it (again).

This is really the funniest

[ratboy666]

The population of France is 62,277,432. Of which 44,625,300 are Internet users.

If 150,000 IP addresses are "served" per day, it will be all over in 298 days.

ISP Reply: Shutdown -H Now

[BlueStrat]

The French ISPs should wipe all the server HDDs, power down the servers/data centers/fiber, lock the doors, toss the keys to Sarkozy, and tell him "Bonne chance mon ami, au revoir!", and hop on the next thing smokin' out of France.

Let's see Sarkozy deal with pretty much the entire population rioting in the streets because the entire French internet infrastructure went dark.

Strat

Don't hurt me!

[amoeba1911]

I AM A COPYRIGHT HOLDER and I AM PROUD OF IT.

In fact, we're ALL copyright holders. Anytime you draw anything you own the copyright to it. Anytime you take a photo you own the copyright. Anytime your kid draws a crayon drawing, that's more copyrighted work... you should be proud of the fact that your kid will own the exclusive rights to that crayon drawing for 75 years after he's dead. Awesome, isn't it? Anytime you whistle yourself a tune, you own the copyright to that musical performance. If it's an original tune, then you own the copyright to the musical score. Anytime you speak, you own the copyrights to the sound you produced, as well as the words you sequenced together. Anytime you write something on slashdot, you own the copyright to it too.

This however is at best a blatant and outrageous over-generalization, could be considered an offensive omission:

Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers

No, I'm not sending any IP addresses. You're not sending any IP addresses. Who are these people labeled as "copyright holders"? I know who they are, that's the "copyright mafia".

Please, properly label these a-holes who want to protect their lavish lifestyles at the expense of us all. Saying that they are copyright holders is over generalization. All humans are copyright holders. These people the article is referring to are the COPYRIGHT MAFIA. They switched their Tommy guns for lawyers; instead of protection money they collect "distribution fees" for doing something that we could do easier without them. Instead of setting example by breaking your knee caps, they set example by suing you into oblivion. They have gotten accustomed to their lavish lifestyles at the expense of everyone around them. This is a mafia operation, not innocent "copyright holders".

Usual Sarkozi corruption

[horza]

Why Trident Media Guard? Read my blog post here:
http://www.rivierareview.com/articles/france-starts-persecuting-internet-users/

Phillip.

Time Warner too busy

[Vegeta99]

Time Warner thinks it's too much work? To keep people from, you know, "stealing" Time Warner stuff?

Shit, what a bunch of babies.

oblig xkcd joke

[spazdor]

"Instead of IP lease information, package contained bobcat.
Would not buy again."

Re:oblig xkcd joke

[MiniMike]

I wasn't thinking of that XKCD, but ironically I do have a copy of that on the wall of my office. Here's the link.

Hadopi for everyone?

[paulkoan]

Does hadopi specify which copyright holders can request IPs from ISPs?

Because it seems to me that most people in France would have some sort of copyright on something they have produced, so irrespective of media files being torrented or whatever, they could all put requests through hadopi?

What about international copyright holders - can they put requests through hadopi?

Don't forget 150000 IP addresses a day won't canvas the entire population in a year or so unless you assume static IPs for everyone.

Nitpick

[pgn674]

Time Warner Inc. != Time Warner Cable Inc. They separated years ago. Time Warner Cable (and maybe Insight Communications Company and Bright House Networks) provides the Road Runner High Speed Online ISP service, Time Warner does not.

Time Warner and Time Warner Cable Agree to Separation

Anti terrorism laws

[twisteddk]

Wont be long ? The US is way out in front when it comes to infringing on personal freedoms. Current anti terrorism laws are worded such that pretty much any goverment employee can acuse anyone of terrorism, and the very mention of the word terrorism means that the accused gets to be locked behind bars with no access to a judge or lawyer. "Enemy combatant" my ass, the law enforcement community has long felt that the law was preventing them from doing what they felt was "right". At the mere suggestion of someone being a terroist wiretap laws are invalidated, an civil rights superceeded. How can that possibly ever be true with no burden of proof ?
Ever heard of ACTA ? Who do you think is lobbying that ? In the US personal freedoms are going down the drain. 15-20 years ago I loved the idea of the US and the freedom and the "we can do anything attitude". I have no idea how or even why this changed, but being on the outside, I can tell you that it has.

At LEAST the french are only cutting off peoples internet access, however, this might actually lead to somoene having to use a library instead of google, so I see this as a not 100% negative ;)