p2pnet news view Politics | Music | Movies:-You have to give it to Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music; and, Time-Warner, Fox, Disney, Columbia, Paramount and MGM: they don’t give up.

Singly and collectively, they’ve tried everything under the sun, including suing their own customers, to gain control of the Internet so they can use it as their exclusive product sales, marketing and distribution vehicle.

It’ll never happen. But they’re still living back in the 20th century when they called all the shots. And they’re suffering under the delusion they can achieve the same thing online.

However, the net makes the difference and instead of creating cookie-cutter ‘product’ for mindless cash-cows ‘consumers,’ the entertainment industry is suddenly up against intelligence customers who know exactly what they want, and precisely how to get it —- without any help from the corporate cartels.

Similarly, certain governments continue to operate just as though their citizens don’t count, one such being England, which is on the verge of learning you can only push people so far.

On behalf of the movie and music industries, it’s trying to implement so-called Three Strikes legislation under which the government will become a 1984-like corporate copyright police agency with ISPs acting as corporate copyright cops. Under it, ISP customers alleged to be sharing with each other online will receive two warnings to stop and if they don’t, they’ll have their accounts cut off.

Theoretically.

But under this game plan, the lunatics will be running the asylum and internet service providers are unlikely to willingly act as wardens. Nor are British people  a third of whom are, according to the music labels’ BPI, file sharing criminals and thieves,  likely to sit still for it.

France is another country distinguished by its determination to put entertainment industry interests before those of its citizens and now, by an amazing coincidence — bearing the UK move in mind — with president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, corporate-backed singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, leading the way, it’s once again desperately trying to co-operate with Hollywood and Big Music.

“The French National Assembly will vote on Tuesday to decide whether to allow the authorities to cut illegal downloaders off from the web,” says the BBC.

HADOPI is the acronym for the government agency tasked with making it work.

“An earlier version of the bill was ruled unconstitutional and a compromise version has been hammered out,” says the story, going on »»»

The proposed 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 if they were caught a third time.

While it is backed by the film and record industries, consumer groups have warned that innocent people may get punished.

The European Parliament is currently considering whether cutting off internet access is a breach of human rights.

However, whatever happens, there’s one vital reality Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music and Time-Warner, Fox, Disney, Columbia, Paramount, MGM are blindly ignoring, and that is:

Even if the HADOPI law somehow passes, it won’t last.

At the moment, online communities know what’s happening, but people without net accounts are largely ignorant of the kind of strokes being pulled by the entertainment cartels.

But if HADOPI,  and its equivalent in other countries,  ever becomes official, the manoeuvring and dirty deals behind it will also become fully public.

The results?

There’ll be a lot happening in the streets. But it won’t be dancing —- especially in France.

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

copyright police agency – 3 strikes plan on track, UK tells Hollywood, September 8, 2009
act as wardens – UK ISPs decry anti-file sharing plan, September 3, 2009
criminals and thieves -7 million Brits are file sharing criminals !?, September 5, 2009
BBC- France to vote on new piracy bill, September 15, 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Movies, Music, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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