Vive la France?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- ‘Politician’ is virtually synonymous with the word ‘liar’. And it’s a given that significant numbers of the people we elect to represent us end up instead dancing to the tunes of large, multinational conglomerates with bottomless pockets and frightening political influence, and which answer only to their shareholders.
If power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, the saying goes, and that’s even more so today than it’s ever been.
So it’s no surprise to find politicians around the world not only grovelling to the major music and movie studios, but actually falling over themselves to do their bidding.
It’s only a tune …
It’s easy to say it’s only about movies, or only about songs.
But it’s about far more than that.
The entertainment cartels own or control directly or indirectly the lion’s share of the mainstream print and electronic communications media, meaning a tiny handful of salaried employees, whose incomes depend wholly on pleasing their masters, decide what significant portions of world populations see and hear.
With that in the background, France is for the umpteenth time trying to pass legislation aimed at effectively giving Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and Time-Warner, Fox, Disney, Columbia, Paramount and MGM, complete political and personal control over significant portions of the population.
Under avowed entertainment industry acolyte Nicolas Sarkozy, France passed Hadopi2, a revised version of legislation allowing the creation of a virtually unsupervised corporate agency funded by French taxpayers. It would target alleged online copyright infringers, ultimately selected by the labels.
Supposed transgressors would be faced with hefty fines and the disconnection of their net accounts if they failed to toe the corporate line. And they’d have no redress .
The same policies are under consideration in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, among others, and if the cartels have their way, Canada will also change its laws to answer the demands of corporate business interests, opening the way for the entertainment industry to turn Canada into another copyright enforcement agency, with Canadians footing the bill.
UMG’s bright minds
UMG, the Universal Music Group, aka France’s Vivendi Universal, is the, “pied piper that all record companies followed into their digital abyss,” says a source familiar with the industry, continuing, “UMG’s bright minds are partly behind this law having helped to convince the Vivendi lobbyists to carry this banner through the French legislature.”
Vivendi is, “quite influential,” says the source, adding »»»
It’s core assets used to include all of the major water projects in France (which means local power in every district that elects legislators) and still include Canal Plus, the HBO (and more) of France.
At UMG, no matter how much their eyes have been opened to the digital future, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose — the more things change , the more they stay the same.
One cannot claim abandonment of a bankrupt policy of suing your customers and then walk across the Atlantic to get a law permitting your customers to be cut off from a critical and increasingly non-elective Internet.
The record companies have not changed.
They are as mean spirited and narcissistically obsessed with the power of their property holdings as they have ever been.
They should stay in the corner with their dunce hats on.
Taking to the streets
French people, particularly French youth, aren’t well-known for suffering political fools gladly and it wouldn’t be any kind of a surprise to see them take to the streets to make their thoughts on HADOPI2 clearly evident and forcibly known.
Meanwhile, it’s worth revisiting the statement recently issued by Reporters Without Borders »»»
The bill does not specify the mechanism to be used to search for illegal downloads. If it is an algorhythm, there is every reason to fear it will be poor at distinguishing legal from illegal online activity. A detailed but innocent email exchange with a friend about a movie, for example, could be picked up by the algorhythm. Similarly, how do you prove the innocence of someone whose IP address is hijacked for the purposes of illegal downloading, and no trace is left?
Legislators are supposed to be responsible for protecting basic freedoms. The bill should stipulate the methods used to monitor the Internet so that their scope and their impact on free expression can be evaluated.
The legal procedure chosen for applying the sanctions is also a source of concern. Of all the penal procedures available, the simplest and quickest has been chosen, one in which a single judge issues a court order without the accused being present.
TWB said it also fears alleged offenders won’t get details of the supposed illegal download when the ‘disconnect’ order is issued.
“This recalls the censorship methods in force prior to the 1881 press freedom law, when the censor did not have to tell offenders why they were being censored,” it declared, continuing »»»
This violates defence rights. According to the European Court of Human Rights, respect for the rights of the defence in judicial procedures means that all sides get access to all prosecution and trial documents so that they can be equally equipped and the principle of impartiality can be maintained. This partial return to censorship is contrary to constitutional principles.
Furthermore, under HADOPI 2, Internet users will break the law just by visiting an illegal download site, even before they download anything. This also recalls 19th century censorship, which restricted freedom of expression even before it was exercised. Internet users should not be liable to punishment until they have actually committed an illegal download.
Finally, the sanction envisaged by HADOPI 2, loss of Internet access for one year, is clearly disproportionate and poses a major threat to free expression. Under HADOPI 2, anyone who “abuses freedom of communication” by downloading a song or a film protected by copyright could have their own freedom of expression and communication abused by being denied access to online information and the ability to communicate with friends and family by email, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and blogs for one year.
Such sanctions are not applied to other violations of free expression. Has anyone convicted of libel ever been ordered to buy no newspapers, read no newspapers or write no newspaper articles for a year? The law does not normally punish a violation of freedom of expression by violating the offender’s own freedom of expression. Why should it with the Internet?
Not at all incidentally, European Parliament amendment 139/46 declaring Internet access to be a fundamental right was opposed by France, notes RWB.
Music is important
The entertainment cartels may have gotten away with this nonsense 10 years ago, but today, we’re all in the same melting pot — the digital 21st-century where ordinary people can, and do, talk with each other at the speed of light on issues they believe are important.
And music is important.
For the first time in history, governments and companies alike are being forced to pay attention to the people, once contemptuously known as ‘consumers,’ they both depend on for survival.
In 2009, we’re customers again, not brainless cash-cows who rely on vested interest media concerns.
In 2009, we’re our own sources of news and information and we decide for ourselves what we want, and what we don’t want, what we can do, and what we can’t do.
The net is the great equaliser and it runs on People2People power.
Politicians and business head who refuse to acknowledge this new reality do so at their own peril.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
[NOTE: The cartoon in the upper right is with acknowledgement, and apologies, to Cagle Cartoons.]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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September 24th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
These companies really are trying to push this kind of crap into law before the next generation makes it into government. The current generation in government (around the world not just here in the US) does not understand or even want the internet.In a generation or two it will become imposable to pass anything like this at all, so the entertainment cartels need these laws passed soon. Hopefully we make it that far.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
So, anyone who creates content – a song, a film, a tv show, anything – is ok to just take and not pay for it ? How is this content supposed to get made in the future ? Not every song can be recorded at home and even when it is, you have any idea how much a good microphone or piece of gear costs ? This is all silly. Music should not be expensive but to think it should be free to just grab is not fair either. Whatever it is you do for a living, I am sure you would have problems if all of a sudden no one wanted to pay you for doing it any longer. Fairness must be found. This is not just about massive corporations and the common man. Music is more universal than just that. If you steal, you should be penalized in some way. It is a simple law of humanity.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
LaVerdad: try asking Renard. He runs vulpvibe.com, and a lot of his music ends up in the hands of people who haven’t paid for it- in fact, it’s part of part of his advertising scheme. The thing is, the companies have built their businesses on the naive assumption that people will bend over and take it in the ass from them for all eternity – and people just aren’t doing it anymore. Music is culture, and culture cannot be controlled forever.
The pendulum is swinging the other way, and no attempt to stop it, no matter how intense, will ever succeed.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@ Sukasa:
Stay tuned for another installment tomorrow.
This gets better and better, or worse and worse …
@ LaVerdad
Steal? Someone stole something? What? And from whom?
Cheers!
September 24th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
To LaVerdad.
Downloading a song or a film IS NOT STEALING!
September 24th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Laverdad:
1. Go read Lawrence Lessig’s book “Free culture”. It’s available online for free, so you don’t even have that excuse.
2. Do a Google Video search on “Rick Falkvinge”. Pay VERY close attention to his presentation “Copyright Vs. civil liberties”.
3. Do some research on the history of copyright law. Pay PARTICULAR attention to the drastic expansion in copyright term over the last thirty years.
4. Study up on Jack Valenti’s attempts to get the “consumer” VCR banned. Pay particular attention to his assertion that — from the point of view of the corporate media industry — it was the equivalent of the Boston Strangler.
5. Go to www. questioncopyright.org, and explore around.
6. Go HERE: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
You’ll respond to this in one of several ways:
A. you’d simply dismiss the stuff above as “propaganda”, thus demonstrating that you *are* here to troll.
B. You’ll at least *glance* at the stuff I reccomended, and — hopefully — start changing your views on this issue.
C. You’ll simply fail to respond at all.
I REALLY understand where you’re coming from, because to be honest, everything you said is just about identical to the stuff *I* used to say. I changed my mind on these issues (and many others.)
Have fun with the resources. It should keep you busy, at any rate. (For one thing, I can’t even wrap my mind around most of the “against intellectual monopoly” stuff.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Sukasa:
“the pendulum is swinging the other way.”
Absolutely correct. The absurdly long copyright terms don’t help matters, either.
The ONLY choice left is either 1. accept DRASTIC revisions of so-called “intellectual property” law, or 2. LOSE the entire concept of “intellectual property” entirely. The way things are going, the notion of “intellectual property” is headed for the same dustbin of history where ‘miscegenation’ ended up. Laws against “miscegenation” strike the vast majority of people nowadays as inherently pernicious and dehumanizing, but they were at least tolerated a few generations ago. Outside of a relatively-few fringe ideologues (racists and such), the entire ‘debate’ is seen as self-evidently absurd.
Given the sheer scale of stuff like file-sharing, remixes, mashups, etc., it’s not hard to see that any attempts to “crack down” on it IN ANY WAY will just piss a lot of really smart, tech-savvy, tuned-in folks off in a lot of countries.
Lily Allen decided to yank her entire blog rather than deal with a shit-storm of her OWN CREATION.