French law proposal will force ISPs to spy on users and terminate downloaders without trial
The proposal looks to be an early Christmas present for the movie and music industries—and a major scrooging for French consumers. For the first time in either Europe or North America, Big Content will be able to offload the tiresome and expensive work of copyright enforcement to ISPs and the commission called for by the law. If the proposal is approved by the French parliament next year, proponents suggest it would go a long way towards slowing the torrent of P2P traffic to a trickle.Remember, like the RIAA says, "When you go fishing with a driftnet, you catch a few dolphins." This plan will shut down the legitimate network traffic of many innocents, all day, every day. ISPs will face legal penalties if they don't enforce heavily enough, but there will be no penalties for over-enforcing. As a result, the procedure by which French people lose their right to communicate online will be automatic, faceless and instantaneous. The process by which they protest their innocence and get the right to communicate back will be slow, bureaucratic, and manual.Meanwhile, French Internet users will have all of their traffic subject to monitoring by ISPs to ensure that content is not being pirated; that's not good for privacy. And as is always the case with such technological measures, there's always the potential for legitimate content, including the increasing amount of legitimate P2P traffic, to be caught up in a copyright enforcement driftnet. Sure, consumers are thrown a few bones—DRM-free archives, faster DVD releases, and no more massive fines for copyright infringement—but the tradeoff is harsh since it comes with a giant government subsidy for Big Content's interests, paid for in lost privacy and an expensive oversight organization.
The cost of this system will be borne by all French Internet users, whose connections will rise in price to reflect the cost of the ISPs being co-opted to do the copyright cartel's dirty work.
This is the presumption of guilt: the idea that software can tell the innocent from the guilty without a trial, without the chance to face your accuser, without even being charged. The hallmark of a democracy is that we do not punish the innocent to get at the guilty -- or, as Cardinal Richelieu once said, "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." Link
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This doesn't seem to make the least bit of sense, particularly if the ISPs are overzealous, and the process is automated. I could easily foresee chaos as large numbers of people are cut off from one ISP after another, whether "guilty" or not. How will people conduct business? Will people logging onto MySpace pages for bands get caught in the net? The RIAA is already doing a bangup job of alienating consumers, but should people have their internet access cut off, I can imagine that it will have a huge negative impact not just on music sales, but on the French economy as a whole.
I wonder if this is going far enough that this measures could be considered significant and permit invoking the laws (and a European directive, and international treaties) that prevent important decision involving people to be automated. Sadly, I doubt it. I'll have to ask to French lawyers I know.
PLEASE PEOPLE HELP!
People got crazy here in france, we feel trapped, and still 4,5 years to go (if not more !).
Please free us! remind how you lent a hand on WW2 ? That's what you beg you now !!
People, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Contrary to the US of date, France is not a banana republic and our new president can't just whip out an executive order along the lines of what you've read above to make things so. We actually have a bunch of safeguards to ensure that citizens rights are protected.
One major point that no one bothered to mention (aside for French TV) is that the proposal in question is, as stated above, just a proposal. Consequently, it's going to be discussed and amended and the final version will most likely be very different from the original draft. Secondly, the government itself stated that it would take 6 months to study the proposal before making any decisions.
If the proposal were to be enacted as it is now, it would pose several major constitutional problems in regard to French law. Not the least of which would be letting software filters decide who is guilty on who isn't, without actually inspecting the offending users hard drive. This automated implication of guilt is a big no-no in France and will be extremely hard to enter into law.
My point is, we have a pretty good system of checks and balances in France and proposals that infringe on our civil liberties tend to be met with big time suspicion, especially when they come from within the industry instead of from lawmakers.
Maybe dfmzfr, maybe. But there is a clear pattern by now isn't there? Large multinationals are turning countries world wide into repressive authoritarian regimes. America, Canada, France, England and Australia all have or have had the fascist neocons installed into power. All are enacting increasingly repressive legislation that caters to the desires of the global corporate hegemony.
I tend to agree with the comments about the difference between the US and France. In contrast to the US, the copyfight movement in France is pretty strong and well-organized.
If it was at the EU level, with EU countries having to ratify the directive, that would be really scary.
But, that's essentially what happened with the DMCA (initially rejected by Congress and then introduced surreptitiously via WIPO in Geneva).
So, still.... watch out.
@#3
We became a banana republic because we were so confident of our checks and balances that we didn't write to our reps as much as we should've.
-SH.
DFMZFR wrote
"We actually have a bunch of safeguards to ensure that citizens rights are protected."
Please wake up! We HAD a bunch of safeguards in France! How could it be different when all the politic and media levers are in the same hands (senat, parliament, newspapers, tv channels, etc.) and political opposition is inexistant or in very bad shape? Where are the counterpowers? i see none. Just look at the laws being voted in the last 3 years and don't forget the actual president was elected with right extremists votes. This is turning like a "Vichy" bad remake (populism, racism, poor an minority hunting, censorship to name a few). All this is just going bananas. I think France Future is bleak. The copyfight/free software movement is very strong in france, but what do you do when politics don't listen? We must fight.
I have every confidence in the French people to get pissed off with things and do exactly that (it is one of your most admirable traits). I wish more people over the water in Mud Island would do the same...
Economics will rule the day. P2P accounts for 60% of your typical ISP's bandwidth, and one in three accounts are engaged in some sort of peer-to-peer downloading, likely somewhat higher in France. How many ISPs will cut out that many of their customers? Are companies like Wanadoo, Free, Noos, etc. going to comply if this is made law?
Ah, I remember the good ol' days of P2P, when it was just the Mac community on Hotline. That was true file-sharing: you had to give to receive. Now everyone and their grandmothers are leaching like mad on Bit Torrent. Only the lawyers win in the end, and possibly computer technicians who remove malware. What a mess. At least we still have Usenet.
What a relief to read such optimistics comments about our safeguards and balanced powers on the french civil rights. Let's just get real, and accept the fact that this "proposal" is strongly pushed by our dear president (illustration: right hand on the heart), that he owns the majority of the parliament, and no strong media dare mess with him. Our beloved president is a control freak, not unlike a Poutine, and I am pretty sure this "proposal" is going to get real.
DFMZFR wrote
"We actually have a bunch of safeguards to ensure that citizens rights are protected."
Actually, no. We French citizens have significantly *less* constitutional safeguards than the USA. Justice isn't really an independant power, here, and the executive is more powerful than the legislative. The parliament can't block a bill introduced by the government, for instance. As for the media, well, TF1 may be less strident than Fox News, but it's the Voice of its Master nevertheless.
(It's embarrassing for us all, really. Think about it: the major French media outlets, TV, press, publishing, etc., are controlled by close personal friends of the president: Martin Bouygue, Arnaud Lagardère, Vincent Bolloré...)
I was thinking about this whole copyright issue, how the RIAA/MPAA try to control regulations, and the right to do what we want with our bits... And also how very often I hear how these 'consumer created and controlled' (the would-be consumers derive their own methods of distribution/consumption for the works of the producers) P2P technologies work to the benefit of independant content producers, and ended up with some questions to share with the BoingBoing editors/readers.
Let's pick a fairly popular torrent tracking site, like m*n*n*v*. A quick look at the front page shows nothing that's not under strict copyright. Hmm. What about legitimate P2P? I wouldn't even know what to look for. Maybe back copies of Make magazine? Ah, they have that, it's a 428 mb file for 9 issues, a size well suited for torrents. 3,617 downloads counted so far on this site. But.. I don't think this is a sanctioned torrent. 3,617 * 9 issues per download * $15 retail = $488,295. Is that revenue lost? Revenue 'donated' for the enlightenment of humanity? Perhaps O'Reilly Media takes this into account when establishing their advertising rates? Is that even a meaningful number? Can downloaders who would never under any circumstance have bought your product if it wasn't given free be considered lost revenue? We can assume that at least some percentage of those downloading the torrent are actual subscribers, who want a portable digitized version of the same content they legally bought (an idea championed by Cory, if I'm not mistaken). But... Make has an online digital version free to subscribers, which is even better than the print version, so I'm sure the majority of subscribers would prefer that version.
What am I getting at? Make Magazine has, I guess, found the best policy is to turn its back on this activity. They probably wouldn't actively embrace it, since they derive no revenue from it. It's existence does serve an incidental purpose, as it helps spread the word about the magazine which hopefully translates into sales. They're not running a charity, they work hard and invest resources into making a quality magazine, and finances matter. No one wants a business to just survive, they want it to flourish. But in the interest of their particular image as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of publication (I'm referring to the hacker sentimentality), they can't strike out against it either, in my mind it would be somewhat hypocritical.
I think the response ultimately depends on the kind of growth of sales the company is generating. If a relatively new magazine like Make is constantly increasing it's subscription base at a rate in line with or better than their expectations, then they might even be affable about the whole thing, but if they were barely breaking even, while their torrent continued to be very popular, they would be a little peeved. Well, maybe not. These are some pretty happy go lucky guys, who have diversified streams of income.
Oh damn. I've lost all my momentum. I'm a terrible essayist. I should never write while sleep deprived, my thoughts are trying to auto-resolve themselves while my brain prepares for shut-down...
I thought in a democracy ones representatives in government were supposed to look out for the majority of their constituents, in other words, if the law benefits foreign multinational corporations, and harms or inconveniences a large proportion of the citizenry, HOW does that benefit society?
tainted pete:
"What about legitimate P2P? I wouldn't even know what to look for. Maybe back copies of Make magazine?"
I belong to a group of CG production artists who regularly distribute content through bitorrent. Training materials and even raw HD plates are sent out. One person may be matchmoving, another does rotoscope work or wire removal, the 3D artist does his or her thing and it all gets sent to the compositor. Some of this is done through FTP but but the large files are distributed through bitorrent, privately of course.
Some software companies are also using P2P to distribute training, often more valuable than the software, to their customers. So there are plenty of legitimate uses.
As boingboing has said repeatedly, much of the blame for the current situation lies squarely with the studios. Had those got out ahead of the technology people would have been used to buying music (the prime mover in all this) online much earlier. But that would have meant not gouging their customers and not charging 20 dollars for a CD full of shitty music and one or two decent songs. They chose not, they made this bed and they get to lie in it.
SCREW THE COPYRIGHT CARTELS!
SUPPORT MUSICIANS SELLING THEIR MUSIC DIRECT!
The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, produced by NIN’s Trent Reznor, is now available for download directly from Saul Williams’ website. You have the option of leaching the album for free , or getting a high quality DRM-free FLAC or 320kbps MP3 for only $5.
(would be nice to see boingboing cover this, its a wonderful thing indeedy)
THIS ALBUM ROCKS and I strongly advise you to pay the $5 and support the movement to break away from the stranglehold of Big Business over music. This is a brave move from Saul, following Radiohead’s recent online release on similar “get it for free or pay the artist” terms. This is the way forward.
The email notification scheme is crazy.
It introduces a class of email that you cannot have marked as spam (or you may ignore it and lose your account). This means that *fake* emails purporting to be from your ISP regarding this law must always get through.
My spam folder is already awash with "Your account will be suspended" mails - what happens when I have to read every ****ing one of these? And potentially reply to all of them in case it really is my ISP?
Someone hasn't thought this through.
How long until President Sarkozy gets his internet service accidentally cut off? That would be amusing.