- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Remember, son, many a good story has been ruined by over verification - James Gordon Bennett
France surrenders to the music and film industries
THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT is falling all over itself to surrender to the music and film industries and disconnect its citizens from the Internet without trial.
The first attempt the French had at negotiating a total capitulation was when it brought in a law saying that if people were caught filesharing three times they would never be allowed an Internet connection ever again.
Imagine the government's horror when the law was constitutionally challenged. It turned out that being garlic-breathed cheese eating surrender monkeys was not actually part of the French Constitution after all and that was just a stereotype invented by roast beef eating Brits who watched too much Red Dwarf.
So then French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered his crack team of legal eagles to find another way to surrender. Sarkozy likes to hob-nob with movie stars so he has to show the big entertainment businesses he is their friend or he will be off the guest list for some of its bigger events.
The French legislature yesterday passed into law a second version of the ultra-controversial HADOPI "three strikes" law that targets illegal online peer-to-peer file-swappers.
The revised proposal aims to deal with the concerns of the legal sages who sit on France's Constitutional Council, who had objected to the first version of the law.
Now Internet disconnections of up to a year can be ordered by a single judge in a "streamlined" proceeding, while Internet users who fail to "secure" their connections can also be punished if other people use those connections to illegally exchange copyrighted material.
HADOPI 2 was passed by the National Assembly today by a margin of 285-225. The Senate has already passed the legislation.
La Quadrature du Net, a French digital rights group, continues to protest the changes. It says that the new judicial procedure is properly restricted to only a few categories of simple litigation such as traffic regulation.
It fails to guarantee the right to a fair trial. It does not include any contradictory debate or public hearing. The ruling is made without any prior judicial investigation.
It also outlaws the "open WiFi defense", under which an accused file-sharer could simply make clear that anyone could have used his or her Internet connection. Under the new law, all Internet users must keep their broadband connections "secure" and are fully responsible for whatever happens over them.
This is one of the clauses that the French government has not thought out particularly well. While it does close the loophole it does expose its cronies in the business world to litigation. If a war chalker downloads a film from the carpark of a big French company, it will be the big company that will have its Internet connection switched off. No Internet would mean that the big French company would be less likely to pay huge amounts of cash to get Nicolas Sarkozy re-elected again.
It is likely that this law will also be appealed on constitutional grounds. If Sarkozy has finally gotten the legal balance right he will be allowed to surrender and watch his citizens drop off the Internet while he and his nice wife sip cocktails with movie stars at Cannes. µ
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the uk will follow suit in no time. hopfully us scots can become independant and fall under the radar before it happens.
She got it right when she said "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
It's been said before but at best this will only deter casual piracy. Ultimately it just gives the coders our there even more reason to develop fully anonymous, distributed and encrypted P2P technologies.
What will happen if this becomes the norm is that file sharing e.g. torrenting will go even more underground & will be forced to evolve even more sophisticated methods to pass filters & monitors.
Encrypted communication, encrypted handshakes, invite only forums...this is already standard. Soon downloads will be through SSL & then what?
Media companies are powerless to do anything about it, all they can hope for is legislation and scare tactics.
ISPs that will not bend to the demands of such forced conditions to spy on their clients will be the most popular. Those ISPs that actually enforce these new laws will see a steady drop in subscribers as the news of other people being cut off or warned about file sharing grows.
Media companies fail to understand that their product cannot be forced on people. When I buy a shirt, or a hard drive, I can return it for any reason within 7 days...what if I don't like your music or film? what if I think the trailer was fab and the movie was crap?
I get shafted.
Bottom line is, you cannot force me to pay. I will get it for free and if I think it's worth money, I'll pay.
Best of luck with suing single mothers & dead people hundreds of thousands for file sharing.
You table a ridiculously draconian bill, knowing full well that parliament is going to bat it right out of the ballpark.
Then you introduce your watered-down "compromise" bill, which, while still unpalatable, *could* have been much worse - and is therefore gratefully accepted.
Oldest one in the book.
As for the movie industry? Well, all I would say is that sueing dead people and cutting off childrens internet connections probably isnt going to turn "I Can Do Bad All by Myself" into "Casablanca".
La musique et les industries du cinéma sont des houlettes. Et j'ai vu le film d'Habitant de Haute-Écosse Ricky ... c'était la merde!
This will make wardriving fun again. Now they punish those that are hacked. Brilliant!
Most people have no clue about WEP, WPA-TKIP/AES. I bet that most of the idiots who voted this law have no clue what it is all about. Until their router is hacked.
lets see if I have this right.
1: Were allowed to access the internet.
2: We are manipulated through the mass media marketing that we can't possibly live with out the internet.
3: We are convinced by the corporations that now control the internet they will slap us silly if we don't abide by their rules and use a California idea of 3 strikes your out (used to permanently incarcerate criminals)whom then will disconnect us from the internet.
I say to the people to go on strike and disconnect from the internet. You want to see how fast the law will be changed. Once you realize how much bleeding the corporations will go through and how your business is tied in with the internet, it will be the Corporations who will ask the government to change the law not you. Right know its only the equivalent of the RIAA in France that has pushed this forward.
Better yet, everyone should download and distribute songs...Let's see if Mr. Sarkozy will put all France out of the internet.
Someone just needs to find someone doing file sharing at every government office or hack the wifi at the offices to do the so. Under that new law the entire government would have to have it's internet cutoff for a year making them realise just how stupid they are.
how long before Nicolas Sarkozy wifi is hacked and he is kicked off the net
"Soon downloads will be through SSL & then what?"
hehehehe so true
BTW, aren’t BBS back in fusion again. You know, those lovable shared folders on private computers that do not advertise the IP address on web browsers, have the login screen but let you with any credentials?
Always thought the recording industries were run by Nazis, given how fast France rolled over is proof.
The mpaa (media pimps of america) etc. The have nothing to do with art or creativity. When love is corrupted by financial interests, it becomes 'prostitution', this is exactly what happens with the Hollywood studios and other media lobby groups. The have enslaved a large number of creative persons into some exploitation contracts, just like the compromised people that become sex workers.... all the profits go to the pimps.... who bribe the corrupt politicians into submission.... the deserve nothing morally....
Wow. I know where I'll be vacationing next year. VIVA les WEP! VIVA les TKIP!
I think this is wonderful, punish the stupid! If you aren't using WPA2 with RADIUS prepare to be disconnected!
If I were french I'd start war driving every member of parliment that voted for that law's neighborhood and get the ball rolling through some good old traceable bit torrents. Buy some 100$ old laptops off ebay, encase them in plastic, plug them into an external power outlet of the bonehead's own house, queue up about 100GB of current telesyncs and bury the whole mess under some leaves. Let's see, 285 members voted yes; that's 2,900$ if you weren't able to recover a single laptop. Worth every penny if you ask me! :)
The only good pirate is in prison or dead. Hang the scum.