3-Strikes Law to Disconnect French Pirates
Written by Ernesto on June 18, 2008Over the past few months, many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet. Today, France is the first to present their new “3-strikes” law, which allows anti-piracy outfits such as IFPI, RIAA and MPAA to police the Internet.
A few weeks after the University of Washington showed that “copyright infringement warnings” are based on reckless tactics, France announces to use these notices to disconnect pirates from the Internet. The warning emails, sent by anti-piracy organizations, often carry the force of law with an ISP, despite being a blind unproven accusation. Lobby groups have pushed for these notices to be all the evidence needed for punishment in some countries, and France is the latest to follow the lobby money, with a 3-strikes law just proposed.
The new legislation will make it possible to disconnect people from the Internet, if they receive more than two copyright infringement warnings. The warnings will be sent out by the ISPs, solely based on data gathered by anti-piracy organizations.
Christine Albanel, the French Minister of Culture presented the new bill today. She hopes the bill will significant reduce online piracy, and is quoted as saying at a press conference: “We know that we are not going to eradicate piracy 100 percent, but we think that we can reduce it significantly.” President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has spoken out in favor of the new legislation before, backed the Minister, and commented: “There is no reason that the Internet should be lawless.”
If the new bill passes, anti-piracy organizations will be in complete control of the Internet subscriptions of French citizens. There will be a new agency that will forward their complaints to ISPs, who will then send out the warning emails. One of the major problems is, however, that the data gathering techniques, as used by IFPI, MPAA and RIAA, are far from accurate.
Interestingly, the French law goes directly against the European Parliament who, this April, condemned state plans to authorize the disconnection of suspected file-sharers from the Internet. European Parliament said that disconnecting petty file-sharers would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness”.
The controversial bill will come before parliament this autumn, and if it passes, the new legislation will become effective on January 1st, 2009.
Previously: Kid Rock: Don’t Just Steal Music, Steal Everything
Next: Swedes To Be Wiretapped, Despite Protests
91 Responses
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 » Show All
eww.
….nuff said.
http://www.savetheinternet.com
then being in france sucks!!
clearly the reason for this draconian law is pressure from the U.S. Once, this is SUCCESSFULLY implemented in France, U.S. and its partners, including U.K.and many countries in Europe might follow with similar laws in their countries.
Already Pirate BAY had to be shifted from Sweden to Egypt because America threatened with W.T.O. sanctions against Sweden, unless the bay was shutdown.
These incidents don’t sound a good omen for p2p world. It’s important for all of us to come together and protest against this draconian legislation for our own good and our own future
Oh thank god!!! Europe was turning into anarchy without this. Yes, it will be the end of piracy as we know it in Europe…
The FRA lagen passed in Sweden… now this in France. Europe’s beginning to look like a pretty f#cked up place to be right now, open corruption and privacy violations. (Hmm, reminds me of a certain super power, great people… shitty government)
Honestly though, we did suspect France was going to screw their citizens, not the first time… look at France’s history…everytime in time of war they bent over and took it like whores, the resistance was only via groups of private citizens NOT the government.
Encrypted P2P… here we come!
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se - copyright is copyWRONG
end of piracy in europe?? (or anywhere else for that matter) ha ha! nice joke
@3: TPB isn’t in Egypt. That was a joke.
Nice, I could gather three “copyright infringement warnings” on those anti pirate lobbiest and disconnect them from the Internet.
The only thing those law will achive is explosion in friend-to-friend darknets.
Even if 100% of the countries on earth passed the same law, they would still not even “Reduce it significantly.” This lady is a bimbo and has no idea what she is talking about. It’s obvious from her statements that she is just repeating what some other asshole said, like all politicians I suppose.
Being in France has always sucked…. At least, internet-wise. I’ve known a few French in my time and they’ve always complained about how monitored their online actions were. One used to play on a pirated (read free) T4C server and he was always nervous about getting caught… And then, he just disappeared…
So after Canada’s crazy law comes France’s. Seriously, do they really think that suing pirates or disconnecting them is going to give them anything in return?
If you sue a pirate for hundreds of dollars, chances are that he won’t be able to pay up. That means that jail-time will become necessary. However, Canadian prisons are full to the brim, so much that most newly convicted people get sentences served out in the community. And if the poor French get disconnected… then they’ll just have to go to Starbucks or hang out at a campus with free wifi…
Seriously, if we had the money to pay for everything we pirate, we wouldn’t be pirating it! If we can’t get our stuff on the internet, we’ll just have to do what our poor ancestors did: arts and craft, playing outside, makin’ teh babies… We’ll manage.
I wish that the MPAA, RIAA and co. would strike a deal with ISPs and get their piracy money straight from them. I wouldn’t mind a 20% increase on my internet bill if it meant I could be rid of all of these petty threats…
Bonjour,
I’m French and I can tell you this legislation is far from its final form / far from being approved and applied. But I’m sure it’s gonna make a lot of noice in France in the next 4 months.
Still, I believe that in France we do have good conditions to innovate and develop P2P software without grockster horror stories pressuring us. That’s the context in which we are developing http://www.podmailing.com/
Sorry for the reckless self-promotion but we’ve been working long and hard on that piece of French-Touch P2P and it’s just coming to fruition so I’m seeking to get feedback from you expert users on our features and performance.
Podmailing is a P2P file sharing service based on BitTorent which among other things:
* hosts and re-seeds torrents freely for up to 1 month (longer soon)
* implements a hybrid BitTorrent/http protocol that enables our transfers to work despite BitTorrent throttling
I hope you’ll like it, voilà !
Believe it or not America is still much more “Free” than most countries in Europe. Just look at the U.K. with their cameras that take pictures and video cameras that record everything you do , then mail you a ticket when they need revenue. A law like this would never have a remote chance in hell of passing in the states. Americans are passive politically (Some would say dumb) but don’t fuck with our cable T\V or Internet or you’ll see the sleeping giant awake from it’s slumber.
Feel bad for you guys down there right now.. Hope you’ll kick the law to hell, and Sarkozy as well. Just don’t like him.
Politicans controlled by a moral secretly backed up with nice wadded envelopes arriving when they need it.
By clamping down on ordinary P2P users, this will just drive them toward using safer methods to fill their hard drives.
Downloading from Usenet’s alt.binaries or sites like Rapidshare are safe methods, as is using P2P over a proxy service.
Since all of these safe methods require a paid subscription for unrestricted service, the ISP’s clampdown on file sharers may end up profiting a host of industries: safe and private “pay-to-download” service providers of various kinds.
its the french, they suck at almost everything….
> “There is no reason that the Internet should be lawless.”
The internet is better free, though.
Too bad. I used to like France. Fucking Sarkozy. What a creep.
Too bad. I should say that it isn’t France’s fault. It’s that weasel Sarkozy.
Quote” 12 Jun 18, 2008 at 23:07 by Kill a Commie For Mommy
Believe it or not America is still much more “Free” than most countries in Europe. Just look at the U.K. with their cameras that take pictures and video cameras that record everything you do , then mail you a ticket when they need revenue. A law like this would never have a remote chance in hell of passing in the states. Americans are passive politically (Some would say dumb) but don’t fuck with our cable T\V or Internet or you’ll see the sleeping giant awake from it’s slumber.”
-
I dont know if your just stupid or ignorant. They censor your news and dumb it down for you and throttle your p2p on the internet already, and you think a law like this wouldnt pass in the Good Ole Third Reich? Err sorry. The USA?
Gots news for ya there JFK, something worse already did pass, its called the DMCA, in the land of the ‘free’ where your own Government sue’s kids, grandmothers and dead people for 100’s of thousands of dollars for a mp3 (or as torrentfreak has already shown even a PHOTOCOPY MACHINE)
quote : its the french, they suck at almost everything….
Héhéé ! maybe right (fucking 53% right ><).
I’m french, in france, open source and open culture militant, and sharing believer.
Yes this idea of law sucks ! (it has been design by a former CEO from a well known disc retailler here in france “la fnac”, no need to say its design for the vampires of industry, distributors, dealers and so on). It would require just too much investment to make this filtering works, I don’t think private ISP are going to let loose on their customers.
And as another frenchiy sais already, the law is far from being accepted and “active”.
Only problem is : having this idea is already retarded.
dF
(rusty english, my bad)
this was already going on in florida, im not sure if the isp’s just decide to do this bythemselves, but they give u 3 warnings then they suspend your “account name” permanently.
but then just open a new account with a different name :)
I would like to also applaud TF for moderating the comments on here. To many times i’ve seen people just talk crap on this site when TF has brought good articles and news to the table.
Kudo’s TF!
This law is very good actually. It will allow the anitpiracy organizations to make a huge mistake by cutting of many innocents who in turn will sue them for more than they lose because of piracy. They’re just digging their own graves.
@22
Better things be done without pain.
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 » Show All
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.