[pp.int.general] HADOPI - "Copyright , egalite , fraternite "

[Valentin Villenave]

2009/4/4 Samir Allioui <coretx at gmail.com>:
> http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/03/1432258 "Trick Used To Pass
> French "Three Strikes"
>
> Valentin, is there a press statement ? Can you objectively tell us what
> actually happend ?

Hi,

we were planning to do a PR, but there's already so much noise here
and we really have nothing new to say. Same old story:
Government meets Majors,
Majors write law,
Government votes law.

You may remember that a year ago President Sakozy had nominated an
"independent comittee" to "think about" the "piracy problem". This
"independent" gizmo was ruled by Denis Olivennes, CEO of the largest
DVDs/CDs/books retailer in France (the Fnac). Olivennes came to the
following conclusions:
1) pirates hunt should be done quickly and at a large scale, using
automatic filtering, spying and punishing;
2) piracy repression should therefore be done without any legal
control (as in judges, etc);
3) piracy repression should imply "small-ish" punishments, such as
Internet access being shutdown, etc -- just to make the above point
accepted more smoothly;

Hence the so-called "three strikes" principle. This principle was
rejected a first time as being incompatible with our constitution;
they reworded a few things and it passed.

As happened in late 2005, some misguided MPs voted an amendment that
provided some sort of pay-per-download piracy legalization. Once
again, the government made the parliament re-vote until they could get
rid of this amendment. That is the way laws are voted in France: Sako
tells them what to vote, and then they have to vote again and again
until the "correct" law gets accepted as required.

> The web is loaded with french story's , but there is no "clear" story in the
> press over here, nor in english press.

Well. I, for one, feel just a bit discouraged which is why I'm summing
it up very shortly. There was quite some noise on the French internet
and blogosphere against this law, but then again there's always been
quite a lot of anti-Sarkozy noise and yet it doesn't prevent him from
being elected and doing (literally) whatever he wants. Shit times.

> Again the industrie showed us that they do not like democracy. I hope the
> french are dusting of the guilotine!

Well, we do have our share of social issues right now, and it's not
likely to stop anytime soon. The anti-piracy laws are only one side of
Sarkozy's policy, and unfortunately not the most indecent one.

Regards,
Valentin