"Three strikes" has just hit a home run in France. But count on extra innings with the EU, where confrontation is imminent.
So - French downloaders, file sharers, and other "pirates" and anyone wrongly accused thereof three times along with their entire household will soon be in terror and hiding from the French authorities. Inspector Clouseau will be tracking "les pirates".
What would that great freedom fighter Charles de Gaulle have said? Perhaps:
- Vive la France!
- Vive la résistance!
- Vive l'internet libre!
PS: don't miss Ed Felten's brilliant take on this, HT to MG.
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The French aspire to be different, we love them none the less.
ReplyDelete"A landmark study by the Institute of European Media Law (EML) found that a levy on internet usage legalising non-commercial online exchanges of creative works conforms with German and European copyright law, even though it requires changes in both. The German and European factions of the Green Party who had commissioned the study will make the “culture flat-rate,” as the model is being called in Germany, an issue in their policies. The global debate on a new social contract between creatives and society is getting more pronounced by the day. Two models are emerging: a free-market approach based on private blanket licences and voluntary subscriptions, and a legal licence approach based on exceptions in copyright law and mandatory levies, that now has been proven legally feasible and appropriate by the EML study."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/05/11/the-world-is-going-flat-rate/