French ‘Three strikes’ HADOPI – back again?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- “HADOPI’s ‘three strikes’ is finally buried,” wrote Jérémie Zimmermann, director of La Quadrature du Net in Paris. “All we have now is a big tax-sponsored spam machine for the entertainment industries.”
HADOPI is short for Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet (High Authority of Diffusion of the Art Works and Protection of the (Copy)Rights on Internet), an agency dreamed up by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in a blatant bid to fall in line with corporate entertainment cartel copyright enforcement dictates.
The Constitutional Council, France’s highest legal authority, “decided that presumption of innocence is more important than the idiotic schemes from the entertainment industries to artificially prolong their obsolete models,” said Zimmermann.
It cut the heart out of the legisilation: “All sanctioning power (ie. disconnecting internet users) has been removed from the HADOPI.”
But, “The Sarkozy government will implement a law aimed at promoting legal online downloading in the coming months despite being prevented from cutting off the internet access of alleged three-time offenders, according to official sources. Meanwhile, the government has already begun preparing a new law that would restore penalties this time decided by a judge rather than by the newly created HADOPI commission,”" says Catherine Saez in Intellectual Property Watch, going on »»»
This would conform to a constitutional ruling on the HADOPI law.
French Culture Minister Christine Albanel [right] said in a 12 June press release that the high-level authority for the diffusion of works and the protection of rights on the internet (HADOPI) would now only be in charge of the prevention of piracy and promotion of legal downloading.
But a new law, completing the HADOPI law and entrusting a judge with the power to temporarily suspend the internet access of alleged infringers, will be presented to the council of ministers before the end of June, she said. The draft law would then be on the agenda of the extraordinary session of the Parliament in July.
Albanel also said that as a result, the full “graduated response” mechanism is expected to be set into place in September and that the first emails and registered letters to alleged infringers would be sent in the autumn. The graduated response, or three-strikes policy, would impose penalties on users after three alleged infringements.
The government’s persistence comes after the French Constitutional Council, which reviewed the constitutionality of the law upon request, on 10 June censored two paragraphs of the so-called HADOPI law which would have instituted a graduated response for alleged copyright infringers on the internet, with a possible service suspension from two months to one year (IPW, Copyright Policy, 11 June 2009).
The Constitutional Council found that paragraphs 5 and 11 of the law went against the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789, because it did not guarantee the freedom of communication and expression, and did not allow for the presumption of innocence, as provided for in the Declaration.
Article 5 empowered the HADOPI Commission to take direct action against users for alleged infringement, rather than putting their case before a judge. Article 11 is related to the responsibility for internet access in infringement cases.
“On 13 June, the law numbered 2009-669 and legally dated 12 June, with the mention of the censored paragraphs, was published in the French Journal Officiel (in French), promulgating it,” Catherine adds in Intellectual Property Watch.
Nor is France alone.
“The New Zealand government is still working hard — on behalf of the corporate movie and music cartels. And at taxpayer expense,” p2pnet said on Monday, going on:
“It’s trying to find another way to implement the now thoroughly sullied Three Strikes plan, the fact French efforts have just been shot down in flames notwithstanding.”
La Quadrature du Net – Hadopi is dead: “three strikes” buried by highest court, June 10, 2009
said Zimmermann – HADOPI is dead. Here comes Loppsi, June 11, 2009
Intellectual Property Watch – HADOPI Copyright Law To Get New Set Of Teeth With Additional Law, June 16, 2009
p2pnet – New Zealand tries to revive 3 strikes law, June 15, 2009
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June 17th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Geez! Hasn’t the “3 Strikes” idea STRUCK OUT by now??!
June 17th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
No, only the non-judicial aspect of it was struck out.
It means that the third strike has to be done by a judge, and Sarko is free to spam users with threats using e-mail and registered mail for the first and second strike.