French filesharers might have thought they were home dry when the country’s Constitutional Council scrapped tough anti-piracy proposals earlier this month. Now France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said he will continue to push for with the new law regardless.
The controversial HADOPI law aims to give those accused of illegal filesharing a “three strikes and you’re out” ultimatum. Unlike similar schemes elsewhere which tend to work on an ISP-by-ISP basis, the French approach would put those suspected of offending on a blacklist available to all ISPs, completely banning them from having any home internet connection.
Speaking yesterday Sarkozy made clear that France is not a place that will tolerate “lawlessness” online.
“How can there be areas of lawlessness in areas of our society? How can one simultaneously claim that the economy is regulated but the Internet is not so? How can we accept that the rules that apply to society as a whole are not binding on the Internet?…
By defending copyright I do not just defend artistic creation, I also defend my idea of a free society where everyone’s freedom is based on respect for the rights of others. I am also defending the future of our culture. It is the future of creation.”
It’s a strong argument. Governments have a duty to uphold the law, and most peer-to-peer filesharing is illegal. By playing a “respecting others’ rights” card Sarkozy may have earned points in the eyes of those who have seen him as merely a puppet of entertainment industry.
However, this doesn’t change the fact that the HADOPI law would target those accused of filesharing. No trial takes place, no judge is involved. The first two warnings are via email. After a third alleged offence the suspect is added to the ISP blacklist.
In 21st Century Europe an internet connection is an important utility. To deny it to someone without a fair trial is a brazen move, and one that many will object to no matter how passionately Nicolas Sarkozy argues.
[via Torrentfreak]
Good post. Of course Sarkozy has a very strong argument and I agree with him. If the accused will get on the blacklist without a trial I think they really need to rethink what they’re putting their country up for.
Besides that what happens for public connections, what happens to people that get a trojan installed that shares some files in a bot network. Do they get blacklisted without even knowing how they can remove the software.
Like that :”Innocent jusqu’à ce que la culpabilité soit prouvée”
How do you translate “Innocent until proven guilty” into French?
GROUPAMA was caught in a software PIRACY case of $200m and has made an unofficial affidavit (claiming that it was not guilty) to divert BEFTI investigators from the evidences officially collected one month ago at a different office.
In its affidavit, GROUPAMA argued that bank secrecy entitled it to limit the scope of Police investigations to a building that was not the place where evidences about the infraction were officially collected.
After the fraud was discovered and denounced by the victim, as GROUPAMA managed to have the General Prosecutor of Paris to state that Police was ‘right’ to ignore the criminal file and focus only on the irrelevant information provided by GROUPAMA itself, there is room for serious doubts in the way that affair was conducted.
As a matter of facts, FINAMA and GROUPAMA have reported false information to the markets regarding their own accounts (where the fraud describbed below has never been reported).
This unfortunate event is more than likely to compromize the confidence ratings of French (bank and insurance) regulated markets on the proven basis that the numbers cannot be trusted.
All the details, including the General Prosecutor reply, the BEFTI investigation file and the unofficial affidavit cooked by GROUPAMA have been made publicly available:
http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf