Plans by the French government to require Internet service providers to throw persistent pirates off the Internet are now closer to becoming law.The French Senate voted 297 to 15 in favour of the law, which now goes to the French National Assembly for final approval.
The law, first suggested by Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2007, requires that ISPs monitor web traffic of their customers. Those detected to be downloading copyrighted material illegally would be sent up to two warning letters, before having their internet connection cut off if they persisted to download illegally.
An amendment suggested by Bruno Retailleau of the right-wing MPF party, which proposed giving customers fines, rather than cutting them off, was rejected by French politicians prior to the Senate vote. Mr Retailleau said that the Internet has become an "essential commodity".
Retailleau is not alone. In April 2008, the European Union rejected calls for such a law to be imposed across Europe, saying that throwing people offline conflicted with "civil liberties and human rights".
France is not the only country taking measures to tackle piracy. Sweden has proposed a law that would allow copyright owners to request the personal details of anyone they suspect of copyright infringement from their ISP. Sweden is reportedly going to enact the law in April 2009.
Would it be a bit like a criminal record? Would you be able to connect to any other ISP?
Also, it basically means kids downloading tracks can get access to the internet revoked for parents.
Nope, EU is going towards declaring internet access an essential service, so it will make this law illegal sooner or later.
I thought it was more of France not letting you 'children' dictate things and destroy or steal things that don't belong to you.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Oh and if your a pirate and you've got caught... ahh diddums... tough!
What I do mind, is that all internet traffic needs to be monitored for such a thing to happen.
Starting to sound a lot like 'totalitarian' to me...
I've always found Neowin to be more anti-piracy than a lot of sites out there.
Well, I do think that those companies who whine the most about piracy should find out the main reasons behind it. For me, when I was a kid, it had nothing to do with not wanting to pay for the software, it was the fact that I didn't have a decent paying job as a teenager and thus, the software was unaffordable.
If they really do want to counter this problem then I do think that more software companies should come out with education/non-commercial versions of their software. Archicad for example gives away free versions of their software for students - they don't lose any money and they gain students who are proficient in their software. It is a win for the student and a win for the software company.
Indeed. Anonymous networks like I2P make it near impossible to find who is uploading or downloading what.
And then there's the huge amount of 'regular' P2P with encryption. Oh, and don't forget to distinguish the illegal P2P from the legal P2P!
Sounds like a Mission Impossible.
Where did you hear that??? Pure BS. France is going against most EU states, which want to declare internet access an essential service; therefore making it illegal to cut someone off from internet access.
wait... what?!
Glassed Silver:win
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