French proposal for a three strike policy on illegal file sharers
Last week the Financial Times reported on a new french proposal in which internet Service providers would make available details of users sharing and downloading illegal movies and films on their internet connection. Effectively, frequent and high bandwidth users taking part in such file sharing as deemed illegal would face an initial warning, a further warning should they persist and finally would lose their internet connection upon repeated activity .
In exchange for the clampdown on illegal downloading, the music industry has agreed to make individual downloads of archive French material available on all types of players by dropping digital rights management protection (…)
However, consumer groups and, even, some of Mr Sarkozy’s own members of parliament yesterday attacked the proposal for a new internet policeman as a threat to civil liberties (…)
[Via FT.com]
The article does acknowledge the significant and multiple legislative changes required by the French Government and Law that would need to be undertaken in order for this system to work while maintaining consumer protection laws.
The FT also ran a forum topic on the article which has led to perhaps more level headed commentary than can be seen on pro-file sharing sites. As such it is worth visiting here.
Elsewhere online coverage of the proposal has received mixed opinion. AfterDawn’s users have commented on both the unfeasibility of the planned action as well as the emotive erosion of civil liberties.
ZeroPaid draws interesting parallels to earlier UK plans to involve the ISPs in dealing with copyright infringement.
PP-International draws on reports countering the effectiveness of the proposal and draws commentary from french consumer advocates as quoted below.
French consumer advocates aren’t as excited. UFC Que Choisir, which has attacked both Apple and the music industry over DRM restrictions in the past while applauding another law that calls for the end of DRM lock-ins, called the agreement “very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, anti-economic and against the tide of the digital age,” in a statement seen by Reuters.
The Reuters article and reference for the PP International article can be viewed here.
