Attack on liberty in France as Sarkozy's government pushes through the re-written law. And Jacques Toubon is put in charge of new business models ( no joke).

 

The French Assemblee Nationale has voted in favour of the Hadopi-2 law,  in a second attempt to enforce copyright on the Internet by sanctioning users. The law  imposes fines of up to 1500 Euros for downloading, and 3500 Euro for being  "negligent" in respect of your Internet access,  and permitting someone else to use it for downloading. Additional penalties will mean that users' access can be suspended and users will have to continue paying through the suspension period.

 

The law has been attacked by opposition groups as a serious attack on liberty and young people in France. Opposition spokesman Patrick Bloche called it "suppression elysienne" and pointed out that artists are unlikely to get "one extra euro" from it. La Quadrature du Net said that democracy will be the loser.

 

The new French culture Minister, Frederic Mitterand, said in a speech after the vote that the Internet cannot become a space for a libertarian utopia. His words backed up the government spokesman in the debate, M. Gosselin, who said that there is no liberty without responsibility and "Internet cannot be the freedom to do everything",  indicating the Sarkozy regime's hard line on Internet users.

 

However, M. Mitterand's follow-up announcement will be more interesting to those who have followed the European Parliament's Telecoms Package debates. The former MEP and copyright industry proponent Jacques Toubon, is to be in charge of new business models for the Internet. I jest not!

 

 

Jacques Toubon is one of three on a committee which is to report by November. The other two committee members are Patrick Zelnik, who runs a chain of music stores called Naive (is he?) and Guillaume Cerruti, who heads up the French arm of auctioneers, Sothebys (how much do they want to kill eBay?) .

 

The French plan is that once the sanctions against Internet users for copyright infringement have been put in place, it will be safe for the big media corporations to launch commercial online offers.

 

Frederic Mitterand was  quietly brought in to replace Christine Albanel after the first 3-strikes law was itself sanctioned by the Constitutional Council.

 

It was Jacques Toubon who pushed the copyright amendments into the EU Telecoms Package, and did his best to ensure that the "co-operation" amendment on ISP enforcement of copyright for rights holders, was carried (Article 33.3 of the Universal Services Directive).

 

Liberation has reported on Jacques Toubon's new job .  

 

Read the report on today's Hadopi-2 vote  in Liberation

Watch the webcast of the Hadopi-2 vote from the Assemblee Nationale

 

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK:England and Wales License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ It may be used for non-commercial purposes only, and the author's name should be attributed. The correct attribution for this article is: Monica Horten (2009) France revives 3-strikes as Hadopi-2 is carried , http://www.iptegrity.com 15 September  2009.