France adopts three-strikes law for piracy
France has adopted a strong antipiracy law, one that may mean those who chronically share unauthorized movies and music online will lose Web access for up to a year.
France's top constitutional court approved a revised plan to penalize those accused multiple times of infringing intellectual property, according to a report published Thursday in The New York Times.
In the spring, the court rejected an earlier version of the law.
Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, applauded the French court's decision.
"Today's decision is an enormous victory for creators everywhere," Glickman said. "It is our hope that ISPs will fully honor their promise to cooperate and that the French government will take the necessary measures to dedicate resources to handle the enormous task ahead."
Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel at NBC Universal, said: "The French action recognizes that jobs and economic growth in creative industries are under assault by digital theft. We need a safe and secure Internet that enables consumers to access content easily but does not facilitate illegal file sharing that kills jobs in creative sectors."
Under the law, a new agency will be created that will issue termination notices to Internet service providers, and they will in turn cut off access to customers accused of piracy. But first, in cases where the agency wants to terminate service, it must first go through some kind of judicial review.
One of the ways the law was revised to gain acceptance by the French court is to require a judge to review each case before anyone's Internet access is shut down.
It's doubtful that a law like this could be adopted in the United States, at least at this point. Both the film and music industries have shied away from lobbying for a three-strikes law. But they have appealed to ISPs to voluntarily create what they refer to as a graduated-response program. This would call for the ISPs to issue warnings to chronic copyright offenders and potentially cut off service for those who refuse to comply.
There is yet another way that copyright owners could get ISPs to help in their antipiracy efforts, according to Gwen Hinze, international policy director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
She says the United States could agree to a three-strikes rule as part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, being negotiated by legislators in the United States, Japan, the European Union, among others.
In this way, U.S. copyright owners could create a law without any public debate, Hinze said. She called any such attempt "policy laundering."
ACTA members are scheduled to gather again for more talks later this year.
Updated at 3 p.m. to include comments by Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
A new approach needed to be taken against piracy. Give people legal alternatives.
I received a notice from Sony for one of my customers thats stated several alternatives to using Torrents.
all of them "unavailable in your region". How stupid are the studios?
Don't download! use these alternatives...oh you can't becuase we said you can't huh?
Sony, MediaSentry etc; stop bugging movie lovers and give them REAL alternatives.
No thanks in part to help from the EU.
Don't like someone? Accuse them of Infringement. Laugh as they can't get online anymore. Anyone want to go into business to send out letters for a fee and flood the French court system? ISPs get to pay the ultimate price because the industry can't adapt. ISPs now get the bad publicity, subscriber loss, etc.
There are so many issues with this legislation I don't know where to start. Legislation should be proportionate and appropriate as the policy tool. It is not either in this case. Consider the person accused of piracy in a competitive company. They are disconnected from the Internet via this legislation. They require the internet to do their job, as such they are either fired or are denied opportunities to succeed.
When accusations count as proof, there needs to be investigation into the merit of the accuser. This is not taken into account in the legislation. So if you are competing for a promotion with someone in a company where internet use is a requirement, just accuse them and see them get fired/looked over.
Does that sound proportionate for an alleged infringement that may not have even happened? It is not proportionate if there was proof of infringments let alone if the only proof is an accusation.
French brain farts, if ask me!
I guess the point is that the internet is so much more than just an avenue for piracy - so why generalise it like this?
It also will not punish/restrict the 'target' group - who will simply move to other methods such as wireless (which is widely available throughout France and usually in unrestricted/free settings) or more dangerous criminal behaviour such as hacking other lines.
I have not had the opportunity to review the Act itself, but the 2nd reading speech (equivalent) in the French Parliament was very concerning. In particular, the "3 accusations" component of the new law really concerns me. It really should be "3 proven cases that have gone through due process and right to appeal". Accusations are not proof of breach. There is a lack of jurisprudence in this intent. It appears that the only appeal point is after you've had the 3 accusations against you, then you get to have a judge review the accusations - not the proof, nor does there appear to be some sort of capacity to dispute accusations.
This also appears against the UN and EU charter that both enshrine Internet access as a human right due to its wide range of services - much like access to postal offices and libraries are considered human rights.
Can you imagine if you were accused 3 times of reading magazine articles without purchasing the magazine while waiting in line at a checkout meant you could no longer shop at a supermarket? this is despite you having subscriptions to magazines and being a regular magazine purchaser (which is the case for most music/move piraters). To ban you from Supermarkets for a year just because you read a magazine article is to ban you from the range of services provided from the supermarket due to an infringment of a minor law.
Lets consider another infringment (consider, copyright is minor legislation where breach is infringment, not a crime): Parking. So you are accused of parking illegally (eg, accused of staying in the spot 5mins longer than the meter allowed) 3 times - you are no no longer allowed to drive a vehicle. This will prevent you from doing all the things you use the vehicle for, not just parking. It will harm the economy as you cannot purchase things at stores you would drive to. It doesn't take into account the money you've already paid into purchasing the hardware (the vehicle); the parking to date; nor tax in infrastructure. You have a right to drive that car unless you have multiple, proven MAJOR infringments, not something as minor as parking.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20091022/1420596643.shtml
it is now time for the French to do another revolution, to throw out their openly CRIMINAL goverment who just handed their country to the most dangerous TERRORIST organisation on the planet: RIAA/MPAA/. Forget North Korea or Iran the real enemi is the MPAA/RIAA, they need to be stop all cost.
CORRUPTION of GENERAL PROSECUTOR of PARIS and misuse of BANK SECRECY:
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
And they wonder why more and more people are intentionally turning to piracy. I say screw them, everything they release is now public property. Put it all on torrents, link to TPB, IsoHunt and any and all other torrent sites you can find. Why not, we're guilty anyway.
Try to stop the whole world, morons.
- by JohnLeM November 19, 2009 2:04 PM PST
- At least, it seems that this anti-piracy law has stimulated things. There are now a lot of initiative in France, even governmental one, attempting to find a proper answer to this situation. For instance, MNEMOSINE, a French Non Profit Organization opened in Feb2009, included in its statuses a universal declaration of human digital rightd and promote an implementation of it. See for instance http://www.crimere.com/blog/jean-marc/?p=983
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