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France removes disconnection penalty from three-strikes anti-piracy law
The most contentious part of France's three-strikes law has been the suspension clause: one (alleged) piracy offense too many and you're cut off from the internet. The country is backing off from that aggressive policy with a new decree banning disconnections. From now on, judges can only issue fines after the third violation. The Hadopi agency created alongside the law is also going away, with the Higher Audiovisual Council taking over its duties. France's Minister of Culture and Communication, Aurélie Filippetti, explains the softened penalty as a matter of focus -- it's large-scale piracy that matters, she says. While some would question the need for any graduated system, we're glad that France at least sees the bigger picture on digital bootlegging. [Image credit: Fdecomite, Flickr]
France mulls extending piracy laws to include streaming and direct downloads
ISPs in the US are just getting around to enforcing a "six strikes" policy against illegal P2P sharing, but France is now contemplating a crackdown on the streaming and direct downloads of pirated content. Hadopi, the government organization behind the country's existing "three strikes" law, released a new report that proposes websites take a page from YouTube's book and actively monitor content by using recognition algorithms and the like to take down things that are presumed illegal. If a site weren't to cooperate after a round of warnings, it might face penalties including DNS and IP blocking, domain name seizures and even financial repercussions that involve having their accounts with "payment intermediaries" (think PayPal) suspended. As for enforcement of this potential government mandate, the dossier posits that it could lean on internet service providers instead of hosting services, which according to EU law, can't be forced to conduct widespread surveillance. For now, these suggestions aren't being made policy, but Hadopi is mulling them over. [Image credit: keith.bellvay, Flickr]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to create music with a tax on ISPs
Nicolas Sarkozy is worried about the future of his country's music industry, and he's turning to French ISPs for help. Speaking alongside other G8 and G20 delegates at the Forum d'Avignon this weekend, Sarko affirmed his commitment to setting up a "national music center" within France, in the hopes of spurring artistic creativity amid a rather dour industrial climate. Modeled on France's National Cinema Center, the system was first proposed back in September by Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand, and, if launched, would be funded by a tax on ISPs. According to Sarkozy, taxing service providers in the name of protecting French art is only fair game. "Globalization [has allowed] the giants of the Internet to make a lot of money on the French market," Sarkozy explained, echoing familiar Gallic attitudes toward online protectionism. "Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France." He went on to praise his country's Hadopi copyright law for reducing internet piracy by 35 percent, but stressed that the government must do more to protect what could be a dying French commodity: "The day when there is no more music, the day when there is no longer a cinema, the day when there are no writers, what will your generation search for on the internet?" Other things, probably.
