French Three Strikes disinformation campaign
2pnet view P2P | Politics:- Do they really think we’re going to swallow this kind of garbage?
Hollywood and Big Music have politicians around the world licking at their heels in their eagerness to toe the corporate lines in their respective countries.
However, corporate entertainment industry attempts to gain control of the net using the legal systems of various lands are as flat and empty and devoid of intelligence as the people who run the companies.
The Three Strikes law and you’re Off the Net rule is in kind of effect in France.
But it was dead before it even began.
Under it, ISPs become corporate copyright cops, acting against their own customers who are threatened with having their internet accounts cut off if they don’t do as they’re told.
One would have thought such legislation would be in direct contravention of rights charters everywhere. And it will achieve nothing beyond robbing taxpayers of public funds to support a cold, hard commercial scheme to keep an iron grip on consumers.
Now France’s HADOPI, the Hollywood and Big Music device used to “regulate” France’s new three-strikes scheme, has “launched a public information campaign about the anti-piracy measures”, reports Billboard just as though this was a genuine news item about a laudable project.
HADOPI is short for Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet (High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights on the Internet).
“Around 260,000 advisory leaflets were distributed to motorists on French highways last weekend (Aug. 21-22) and the same operation will happen this weekend (Aug. 28-29)”, the story says, going on >>>
The campaign targets families traveling in France during the summer holiday period.
The leaflet explains how the three-strikes scheme will work. Warning letters will be sent to those suspected of illegal downloading. In the event of repeat infringement, HADOPI’s rights protection committee CPD will submit the file to a judge who can approve an order to cut the offender’s Internet access.
The information leaflet states that HADOPI aims to protect authors’ rights and ensure that Internet users secure their connections to prevent misuse.
Billboard continues >>>
An Internet subscriber can be fined up to €1,500 ($1,900) as well as having their Internet access suspended for a month, the leaflet explains. However, there are provisions for account suspension for up to a year for the worst offenders. Internet subscribers will have the opportunity to challenge the case against them at each stage, but will not be able to contest the sanctions on the basis that they were ignorant of how their account was abused. Internet account security is a key requirement of the HADOPI regulations.
HADOPI secretary general Eric Walter told Billboard.biz that the body is working on further plans to raise awareness of the new anti-piracy regime this year.
Walter said HADOPI’s rights protection committee was already at work, meaning the first warnings regarding copyright infringement could be sent at any moment. There is no confirmed date for the first round of warnings.
Relatively few people will be affected and it’ll end up with the same result as the failed RIAA sue ‘em all scheme in the US —-
—- it’ll tell people who’d never before heard of file sharing all about it.
But it’ll look good in the lamescream media.
Meanwhile, “DarkNets have been the underground mainstay since the year dot”, and “far more ‘product’ is moving around on them than even entertainment cartel statistic creators could come up with in their wildest imaginings”, said p2pnet in April last year, noting:
“DarkNets range from simply passing (and mailing) discs around, to WASTE, through trusted friend-to-friend bulletin boards, FreeWAN cells, Freenet-type sites, physical and WiFi sneaker nets of various kinds, hidden sites, and so on … ”
Nothing has changed beyond the fact the hidden layers have grown wider and deeper.
HADOPI schmadopi.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton- p2pnet
(Cheers, RW)
… and identi.ca
Billboard – French Anti-Piracy Body Launches Information Campaign, August 24, 2010
p2pnet – DarkNets: not tomorrow, but here and now, April 2, 2009
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