Christine ‘3 strikes’ Albanel fired
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- In the continuing French ‘three-strikes’ farce, entertainment industry minister of culture Christine Albanel, who’s been fronting it for president Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollywood and the Big 4 music labels, has been fired “as part of broader government reorganization”.
She’s replaced by writer and TV producer Frédéric Mitterrand (right) who is, by an amazing coincidence, the nephew of former French president François Mitterrand, says Billboard.
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,” p2pnet posted recently, contining »»»
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 …
Now, “With the Constitutional council having stressed that only a judge can rule on such terminations of Internet access, the new bill intends to simplify procedures to avoid French courts, which would slow the sanction process,” says Billboard.
“Instead, a judge would be allowed to rule through an “ordonnance pénale” (penal order), a process that avoids a hearing involving the presence of the person accused of copyright infringement. Only in the case of an appeal would a court hearing take place.
“Under the new proposals, the cutting of Internet access would also be added to the sanctions the judge would be entitled to apply in cases involving counterfeiting in relation to intellectual property. The law until now allowed fines of up to €300,000 ($418,000) and three years imprisonment.”
Not only but also, “The government is also believed to cautiously considering a system of automatic fines for users neglecting to protect their Internet connection in cases of file-sharing on that particular line,” it says, adding:
“This would prevent any defence on the basis that someone else, such as a neighbor, had accessed the Internet connection.”
Good luck with that, Frédéric.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Billboard – French Govt Reworks ‘Three-Strikes’ Law, June 25, 2009
La Quadrature du Net – Hadopi is dead: “three strikes” buried by highest court, June 10, 2009
p2pnet – French ‘Three strikes’ HADOPI – back again?, June 17, 2009
Intellectual Property Watch – HADOPI Copyright Law To Get New Set Of Teeth With Additional Law, June 16, 2009
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June 27th, 2009 at 10:45 am
The incarnations of this bill are like cockroaches – no matter how many times they get stamped upon, they just keeps coming back.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
And just like cockroaches, these parasites will still be around to cause trouble for everyone long after the world is destroyed through nuclear anihilation.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Note that Roger Karouchi, minister (secrétaire d’État) of the relations with the parliament also got fired because of the initial rejection of the law when the opposition had outnumbered government MPs (because 95%+ of MPs were absent). And now, the project will be handled by either the minister of Justice or the minister of homeland (or “interior”) affairs.
They’re damn stupid, 10 years after Napster they still don’t get it. Folks will move to darknets, use the latest LimeWire and that will be it.