Christine Albanel, France’s Minister of Culture and Communication, wants to cut off Internet access for people who are suspected of illegal filesharing. HADOPI is the body that is supposed to be put in charge of this. They’ll be voting on it in the French Parliament on March 4th.
I don’t feel strongly one way or another about illegal filesharing, but I do feel strongly that Internet acces should be a right, not a privilege.
If you want to know more, go to La Quadrature du Net (in French, and where you can get this and other blackout banners) or ipTegrity (in English).
Christine Albanel, France's Minister of Culture and Communication, wants to cut off Internet access for people who are suspected of illegal filesharing. HADOPI is the body that is supposed to be put in charge of this. They'll be voting on it in the French Parliament on March 4th.
I don't feel strongly one way or another about illegal filesharing, but I do feel strongly that Internet acces should be a right, not a privilege.
If you want to know more, go to La Quadrature du Net (in French, and where you can get this and other blackout banners) or ipTegrity (in English).
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Despite massive lobbying efforts by the French, a 44-member EU commission on civil liberties just unanimously voted for securing Internet access as a basic human right… The EU parliament had already voted the same thing.
Details here (in French): http://www.ecrans.fr/L-acces-a-Internet-ne-peut-pas,6441.html
Sarkozy can keep trying, but between the EU and the technical hurdles involved, I’m not too worried. For now.
I followed this issue and I’m gravely concerned Pam.
Much like the long-time storage of customers entire web history, the privacy rights of average Internet users are blatantly trampled, just to make sure that some
rich powerhouses can enforce their copyrights.
In France most politicians think its ok to punish an all group of people because one of them didn’t abide by the law. The French parliament has just voted a law that allows cutting the internet line of a group of people, a family or a business, if one of them downloads content without paying the copyright. If they want to avoid losing their internet line the French will have to spy on other members of their family or business to stop any illegal behavior related to copyright. Artist in France are much more clever than anywhere else (except maybe China or the ex Soviet Union). The French already pay many taxes that are supposed to offset the loss of income due to the infringement of copyright. Non only they pay taxes but they pay huge amounts of money ( those who work in the private sector) through their social assurance premium huge to allow hundreds of thousands of artists to get paid for nine months by the social insurance system when they have really work for three months ( “Regime des intermitents du spectacle”) . At the time where you can be robbed, raped or injured with impunity in big areas where millions of people live without any protection of the state ( the police refuse to go there because it’s too dangerous) it’s certainly more important to remind to the French that copying music on the internet is the ultimate crime ! It’s what does any teenager. Not surprising that in France medias use the word “ les jeunes” (meaning young people) to say punk or tout. You could imagine that so much money invested in French artist would encourage creativity! As a matter of fact where are our Bach Mozart or Vinci (a time when copyright didn’t exist.) Sure the creativity has never been so low but artist have never been more convinced that France need a more powerful state system (In France the state system get only 52 % of the total income)
Bonjour Charles.
Thank you for your comment. I agree that it is absurd and misguided when there are so many higher priorities. As an American in France I am surprised and kind of embarrassed for the French because it seems like such an un-French attitude to have…
You might enjoy what my husband wrote on the subject:
http://teletravail2.0.free.fr/?p=74
http://teletravail2.0.free.fr/?p=76
The fact that the HADOPI law will require a certain piece of spyware on _all_ French personal computers,even if their computers cannot run this spyware — does this not break _habeus corpus_! This spyware amounts to self incrimination!
I hope that some legal group will look into this angle! When will the law be active?
Hi Ralph.
As it turns out, for legal and technological reasons, the consensus is that it will be practically impossible to implement that law despite the fact that they passed it. They don’t have the technology to do it yet, and that would take years and money, and actually prosecuting people would be extremely difficult.
So those of us who object to this law on principle are not too worried. In fact, many think the French government is clueless and ridiculous and that they should stick to matters they understand…