Let me get this straight. If you download something that might turn out to be pirated in France, you will lose the right to use the internet. On the other hand, if you drive recklessly, or too fast in France, which might result in someone’s death or serious injury, you get a fine, or even prison time, but you don’t permanently lose the right to drive; e.i. your driving license. I won’t pretend to be an expert on French traffic laws, but I bet that even if you get caught driving a stolen car, you will still keep your right to drive (after you get out of jail, that is).
So why then is the right to use the internet - in my opinion, one of the most basic and most important human rights today - being revoked to people because of piracy? 90% of my income comes from internet. I entertain myself online. I inform myself online. Perhaps I’m not the average Joe now, but trust me, 10 years from now, I will be. Taking someone’s right to use the internet - forever - is like taking their right to ever again drink tap water. It’s stupid, it’s too harsh, it’s insane.
Now, one can always say the oh-so-often used argument: well, if you want to keep your right to use the internet, don’t pirate stuff. Well, it’s not that simple. By that line of reasoning, you can electrocute people for smoking a joint. Or torture them for stealing pennies from a vending machine.
Piracy is not good. But piracy is not synonymous with file sharing. It’s not the same as BitTorrent. It’s different from P2P. You can’t simply forbid all these things on account of piracy. Bad stuff happens in dark alleys, but you cannot forbid people to meet in dark alleys.
I have to admit that the implications of this new deal between the French government and ISPs aren’t completely clear yet. A person caught pirating will get their account terminated by the ISP; but will they have the right to sign up again through another ISP? Or will the government and ISPs keep some kind of black list and make sure you never use the internet again?
Unfortunately, these are the least of the French internet users’ worries. The issues go far deeper. What about users who don’t know they’re downloading pirated material? What about hackers breaking into WLANs and pirating stuff just to get accounts terminated? Huge companies like Google and Universal can’t agree on what is pirated, how to stop it, how to monitor it, but sure, the little guy has to know all this or else his internet pipe gets cut off. Great idea.
The internet is becoming a place I like less and less each day. William Gibson, in his Sprawl Trilogy, envisioned a sort of an underground internet; a secret network behind a huge wall, not connected to the regular matrix. I hope we don’t have to resort to that in the end.
First of all, I have no interest in any of the concerned industries or companies and just want to bring information and not just rumors, as well as shed some lights on how things work from a legal perspective here in France.
Well, everybody’s off the wall here with major newspapers having huge headlines about the Rapport Olivennes, but it seems that very few have checked their facts. Or maybe they have but carry a purpose other than information, which is quite current with french journalists that don’t have, , for most of them and to my appreciation as a learned citizen, the same degree of professionalism as their anglo-saxon counterparts. I just finished reading the settlement that has been signed between the concerned parties in this story (available here http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/conferen/albanel/accordolivennes.htm the full report here : http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/conferen/albanel/rapportolivennes231107.pdf )
and yes, part of it is repressive in its recommandations. In fact, french law, when you read it, seems highly repressive with an array of fines, jail penalties and all sorts of things that seems really scary sometimes. But first of all, the agrement in not law and was not voted in Parliament and I assure you that no judge would enforce it. They would stick to what exists right now that can already send you to jail for authors’ rights and copyright infringement. It’s never happened so far, there must be a reason. The reason is that although french law, as such, is highly repressive, it is only a tool for judges that, in the last resort, choose how hard should be hit. And french judges are very well known to be very careful as to how hard they hit and have a strong sense of equity. So even if this is ever voted as a law, and tomorrow’s not the day, for someone to be restrained from using the internet would mean that there would really have blatantly crossed the border more than a couple of times. As far as the filing part goes, it would certainly be quite similar to what already exists in the private banking area for people who don’t pay their loans back and are restricted from contracting more.
But there is also an equally binding part in this agrement that clearly states that content should be made more easily and rapidly legally available, and at a lower cost, even giving binding delays for works to be available as VOD, whether they be movies or TV shows, as well as stating clearly that VAT should be reduced to its lower rate throughout Europe on cultural goods. I haven’t read much about that.
So we’re very far away from anything I have read so far. And yes, I do believe that if movies cost less, people would buy more of them (most of the ones I buy cost me between 5 and 13 EUR and they’re what could be called Long Tail, damn, that old Pacino movie I found…) and that if people have started downloading music and films that had sometimes not been released yet in their geographical areas, most of the time for marketing AND money-making purposes, the movie and music industry is in it for a great deal and that it should have acknowledged long ago the world has changed and that their revenue model will never be the same again. Hell, some studios are well known for delaying the release of films as well as creating shortage to keep the demand, and their prices, high. I ran all over the place for a famous animation movie a few months ago and ended up buying it on eBay… I can understand that after waiting for a few weeks or even months and not having what you want, you’ll try and figure out a way to get in on the web just as much as I understand that someone who’s downloading day in and day out and sometimes selling the movies should be warned to stop and eventually prosecuted.
So sleep tight, keep douwnloading, and keep in mind that on the web, anyways, nothing is never secret for long, especially when you stay connected for days with a high bandwidth. If they haven’t busted you yet, they’ll find all they want on the day they change their minds.
@Bearnie ze Borg - thanks a lot for a very insightful comment. I can imagine that not all laws, regulations and propositions are the same; however, in my article I was mostly referring to the general idea of revoking someone’s right to use the internet because of piracy.
I wish to make a correction-driving is a privilege not a right. Using the internet is a privilege not a right. There is no constitutional protection of privileges.