The French tend to have something of a reputation when it comes to saying “no”. Sometimes they are wrong-headed in so doing, which is why, generally, this contrariness is usually looked upon in a somewhat negative light.
A controversial French bill which could disconnect people caught downloading music illegally three times returns to parliament on Wednesday for debate.
Why is this?
The legislation, backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, was surprisingly rejected in a vote earlier this month.
Well, well, well… Let’s make no mistake, this was an insidious piece of legislation in the first place, so it’s good to see the system working – parliamentarians doing what they should be doing and rejecting knee-jerk, ill-conceived legislation. Westminster, please take note.
The music industry has been calling for stricter laws as revenues have fallen.
My heart bleeds. Not that I approve of piracy – not paying for a product is wrong – but an industry that believes that it should control a product once we have paid for it deserves contempt. And, frankly, they deserve all they get for foisting that ridiculous film clip at the beginning of DVDs equating copying a film to car theft. Let’s keep it in proportion, please. Incidentally, I have found that repeatedly hitting the fast forward button sometimes causes it to skip. I fail to see why I should be forced to watch their patronising horse shit – so I don’t. Oh, and have you yet seen a poor film producer? No, thought not*.
Anyway, after that little rant, moving on:
The new legislation operates under a “three strikes” system. A new state agency would first send illegal file-sharers a warning e-mail, then a letter, and finally cut off their connection for a year if they were caught a third time.
The reason it was rejected is because there would be a danger of people being cut off who were not file sharers. And, as I understand it, those cut off would still be expected to pay for their connection…
Despite this, naturally,
It has been backed by both the film and record industries.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Copyright infringement is second only to mass murder. And, there’s all those sons and daughters of actors and musicians selling matches, barefoot in the streets to make ends meet. Remember the “Home Taping is Killing Music” bollocks back in the seventies and eighties? Did it? Did it buggery. While these people want to treat me as a criminal because I copy my CD collection and transfer it to MP3 for the car, for example, they will get no sympathy from me.
The socialist parliamentarian Patrick Bloche said the bill was “dangerous, useless, inefficient, and very risky for us citizens.”
Clearly the French socialists haven’t been talking to their British counterparts. The British ones would regard it as all fine and dandy – state surveillance of the population being a jolly fine idea and we want more of it, please.
Two members of Mr Sarkozy’s majority government joined the socialist opposition in voting against the bill, in a protest to an amendment which would have made users who had been banned, continue to pay their internet bills.
We could do with more of that, too – although I see that the idea does seem to be spreading with the recent government defeat over the Gurkhas. And quite right, too. We need to see a lot more of this behaviour if our democracy is to be salvaged. MPs should be voting for what is right not what the whips tell them to.
When the bill was defeated John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, which represents the global music industry, said the result was “disappointing”.
“President Sarkozy has been a true champion of intellectual property rights and the proposed law is an effective and proportionate way of tackling online copyright infringement and migrating users to the wide variety of legal music services in France.”
John Kennedy has a very strange idea (as does Sarkozy) about what the word proportionate means.
* I realise that this does not justify copyright infringement. However, I’m tired of their repeated whinging about how much they are losing as if it will in some way damage an over-rated, over-paid industry that is far from suffering.
I completely agree. I believe in obeying the law, but with copyright law, my patience wears thin at times.
I think, however, I would be a little more patient if it wasn’t for the rather shrill (and usually completely unconvincing) noises made by the defenders of copyright laws. And I’m afraid that they have made me wonder if the world would really be a poorer place if copyright law ceased to exist.
Needless to say, nothing on my blog is copyright. Any of the material on it may be used, reproduced, or transmitted, in whole or in part . . . .
😉
Mine’s slightly different – if you want to use it; have the decency to ask and acknowledge. I consider this reasonable.
I don’t have a problem with people insisting that they be paid for their work, but the over reaction of the industry – even to the point of those silly regional locks on DVDs smacks of control freakery, not reasonable expectation of payment for a product.
“Mine’s slightly different – if you want to use it; have the decency to ask and acknowledge.”
That’s the sort of reasonable, sensible approach that risks bringing copyright into good repute.