A pact between the French Government, French ISP’s and the local music and film industry will see French users who download material from P2P networks losing their internet access.
French internet users will face a three strikes and you’re out policy, according to the NY Times. Users will receive a warning for each illegal download before losing their service on the third infringement.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed the deal with rhetoric that is bound to win him an Honorary Life Membership of both the RIAA and MPAA: “We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture…The Internet must not become a high-tech Far West, a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs.”
The Far West of where? Perhaps I’m mistaken in believing that the far East (ie China) is the global hotbed of Internet piracy…or did he mean the wild west? lost in translation perhaps.
An independent authority supervised by a judge will manage the scheme and decide if and when users should lose their internet access.
Not surprisingly the recording and music industry loves the move, with the head of the IFPI (the international recording industry body) John Kennedy telling the Times that “this is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far..President Sarkozy has shown leadership and vision. He has recognized the importance that the creative industries play in contemporary western economies.”
image via Wikimedia Commons
ahhh, the french defending their cyber borders
Three strikes are “you’re out” instead of “your out”. So much for criticizing our great President, N. Sarkozy!
French law – you don’t want to cross that.
the French are very anal when it comes to law
Hope this does not happen in the Philippines.
That means that France internet population is going to go down in the next 3 years?
I cant help but think: now that the Record Industry has this up in France that they will now be pushing for similar laws elsewhere…the US, Australia and Canada come to mind immediately
“you’re out” is correct
damn.. this is very, very scary. I hope the US doesn’t consider this.
Not like it will do much though.. people will just revert to the original ways of getting illegal goods I suppose. Can’t ever block that… unless you turn off the Internets.
“Far West” is French for “Wild West” in deed …
Are they still going to wonder why so many French are leaving the country?
well….. -_-;
don’t worry, tech will help us to reach what we want in another way.
i thought stop internet service = bluster
This block is only temporary. The ISP’s know that they cannot support large scale broadcasting without p2p. Here in the Netherlands, the Dutch public broadcasters see p2p as the only way to distribute the programs en masse. So they sponsored the p2p-program http://www.tribler.org, made by the highly acclaimed technical University in Delft. Tribler is based on bittorrent (and open source too) and thus could be illegal in France.
p2p is here to stay. Sarkozy is a complete fool if he tries to stop it.
Fool is not enough to define Sarkozy, he is killing freedom and oportunities.
China being a hotbed? How about other countries in the east (or south east) like India, Thailand and Philippines?
Marko: I agree with you. This block could be only temporary. ISP’s thrive on P2P.
Correct me if I’m wrong but surely this pull on the politcal strings by the RIAA/MPAA will be void when a standard form of encryption exists for all torrent clients. No way to tell if the content is illegal if it’s encrypted. Everyone can just argue that they got really interested in Linux all of a sudden.
Interesting, it is the start of another censored internet.
And it sounds so silly to define P2P to be equivalent with piracy, it’s like saying
“if you try to burn something into a DVD-R/CD-R, then you will be warned, and you will loss your desktop computer upon the third infringement of such rule”…..
Perhaps it’s time for neighbor king Juan Carlos to yell at Sarkozy:
“porque no te callas?”
correct me if i’m wrong here. but at least in the ny times article, it doesn’t say anything about p2p!? it is not about restricting the usage of p2p, but about restricting users to download copyright-protected music or films illegally. although i’ve heard that most of the places where people might be able to find such content are p2p networks, it is wrong to state that the pact “will see French users who download material from P2P networks losing their internet access.”
what’s wrong with protecting artist rights? Bush is planning on sending these people to jail instead of cutting off their Net access!
I am for protecting property rights but I don’t think censoring and restricting certaint protocols over the Internet is definitely not the good direction to take.
If people don’t like the direction “artists” have taken by turning to lawyers and spamming with tv commercials to sell their crappy uncreative musuc then the solution is pretty simple. stop buying the crappy music and stop going to overpriced concerts. In essence let the problem work itself out. The new successful artists will operate in the underground where the best music already is. American radio and television is really nothing but commercials now anyway so the capitalist greed disease is reaching the tipping point. Looks like the value of US currency is going to be garbage soon anyway so we will see how proud, free, and strong “Americans” are when all the luxuries are gone and all those credit card, car, and house loan notes are called due. Seems Countrywide (holds the most mortgages in the US i think) is close to bankruptcy now. When all those loans go bad theres going to be a big increase in the homeless rate so stolen music seems small compared to the rate at which corporate greed is destroying the west. It’s grab all you can while you can for the executives.
Agree with pdog. This post doesn’t strike me as a fair analysis of neither the NYT article nor the french agreement . The title is misleading and incorrect.
Downloading copyrighted content is already illegal just about everywhere in the world, so between risking being sued by the RIAA here in the US, or risking getting my internet cut off in France… well, I guess I’d rather be in France.
This is why we have U.S consitution Amendment I & Amendment IV, and Sherman Antitrust Act. MPA and RIAA might end up paying U.S huge fines. I talking about $ 1 Trillion dollar damages and cover ups. They didn’t pay up unionize screenwriters and songwriters at L.A
“Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]“[
It’s already illegal to partake in “illegal downloads,” so why aren’t they simply prosecuting the people they catch rather than giving them a three-strikes opportunity? This actually sounds rather lenient. The phonographic associations will probably let the government run this scheme instead of suing people directly.. so, really, people are now getting three chances instead of one.
We we Missuer, ze gallow est fa you!
Down with france. I will still provide many piracies.
In France it seems like the recording industry is a lot more open with the IP, sites like deezer let people stream whatever they want. I am against piracy but the power of peer to peer in a legitimate form is to important to destroy because some people use it to steal stuff.
Like the French say, “Thoughts are Free”
I think screenwriters should sue greedy MPAA. MPAA did collect millions dollars from download users, and didn’t paid up screenwriters property rights.
MPAA do make execuses. saying yeah… yeah… I pay you later… Next day, they never showed up and pay check.
It would be a better idea to block the sites and have some laws on Cyber space too.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
What is that abstract design behind the head on the flag?
P2P is not going to be forbidden….
We are speaking about illegal content…
The “graduate answer” looks good for me. Nobody is going to receive from nowhere, as this is the case in the us, a huge fine.
There is however a big problem induced by this law. The cases are not going to be managed by a court. But by a specific juridiction, which is not really aligned with the basis of the French law.
French stink, eat frogs and surrender to anyone. What do you expect.
Somehow I find it hard to grasp ISPs willingly loosing customers. And again, there is always another ISP that will take on that “disconnected” customer the day after he was disconnected.
And with no “i-will-sue-you-until-your-pants-are-off” policies, just disconnections, piracy will bloom.
peter cooper: because opening a case it takes 700 euros and a lot of time. its impossible to prosecute anyone.
thats why currently in France there is only a fee of 35 euro if you illegaly download copies.
thank god for usenet!
I live in France, since about 1 year Free.fr (the largest ISP in France i think) have been blocking the ports for downloading from the alt.binaries newsgroups. This remains the best way to obtain content, alas it’s no longer an option with Free. They also blocked P2P (lowered the download rate) at around the same time, but shortly after this resumed to normal. It seems they could not get away with that too. However, P2P is somewhat polluted by the oppositions attempts to cull this piracy with many many bogous copies of ‘encoded’ content that once downloaded they ask you to go download a ’special new’ codec, or sign up for some affiliate program before they send you the password’ (which never arrives).
So it is getting tough to get content in France, however, there are always new ways opening up. Obviously I’m not going to go into them, but i suspect many people will simply start using proxy servers on mass, and downloading directly from the good old likes of dailymotion et al.
1) The French have a tendency to pass laws that are never implemented, there is hope for us culture addict downloaders.
2) when you see who was on the panel representing the artists it’s a tremendous insult on culture, musicians, comedians and all the true artists who have something to say, share and produce.
3) the real danger in P2P is not for French culture but for the French marketing industry. An industry that has dried out the culture music scene for decades. All you hear is “radio gaga”, marketing products, heard many soooo times before. all you see is mainstream French crap or dubbed mainstream series.
P2P opened up the world for me and my kids. I discovered so many things thanks to P2P web sites. This anti P2P propaganda simply makes me want to cry ! It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of gaining access to culture and to the world.
Oh yea, and the iPhone is AT&T-only.
Obviously there will be a workaround this “block”. Programs will desguise as skype, will use proxies, blah blah. This is the usual politician’s “resolve”. But they never walk the talk.
So, is blocking internet access from DailyMotion for constantly infringing copy-righted content is next? or is it just messing with the “powerless” end users?
remind me the old cypher rules in France, where encryption was illegal on the internet…
Demonoid is also the target of RIAA, currently it is closed, I doubt they are sticker in their home country.
Hi , i leave in France. Groochat already knows a way to overcome this! cool!
I would leave France too now
D
I’ve been to France 3 weeks ago and there were just a few who had the guts to download from torrents San Andreas
this law brings nothing new, most of the french people respect copyright laws
Oh Myyyy what will I do when all the unsecured networks within range lose their Internet access?
Scary stuff, but it’s not any sort of solution, just a punishment and band-aid applied to the situation.
If this happens in Argentina no one would have Internet access
I think the greater problem is in order too archive the punishment, the ISPs have too spy on their Users to indentify Copyright Infridgement. Thats a new dimension and very scary.
this is so short sighted
He is creating his own a big small world! Idiot!
The NY Times actual says that “Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new anti-piracy system unveiled on Friday.”
It did not mention that all P2P users will be banned. From my understanding this is the approach that most countries take- making it punishable to download illegal music/video/etc.