President Sarkozy's  Creation and Internet law, also known as the Hadopi law, which will bring in 3-strikes anti-filesharing measures in France, has been passed by the Assemblee Generale and the Senate. This means that it will shortly become law.

In the Assemblee Generale, it was voted by a narrow majority of 296 votes in favour to 233 votes against. This was the second time it had gone through, after having been rejected on the first occasion. French President Sarkozy and his Culture Minister, Christine Albanel, bent all the French Parliamentary rules to get it through the legislature a second time, in just one month.

The vote is in spite of the European Parliament's opposition to 3-strikes, as  expressed in the Telecoms Package vote

last week, when it carried Amendment 138. Madame Albanel,  and Jean-Francois Cope, architect of the French Internet levy to substitute  for television advertising revenue and pay for public servicebroadcasting, have both stated the view that Amendment 138 is no barrier to the law.

 However, Amendment 138 does say that a judicial ruling is needed before Internet access may be cut off, whereas the new Hadopi will be a public authority with no judicial status. Moreover, the law is explicit that the Hadopi will use evidence supplied by 'agents' and those agents will be the rights-holder associations. Clearly, such an authority should not be permitted to  act in lieu of a court, in all reasonable circumstances.

 In the French Senate, the majority was much larger - 189  in favour, to 14 against. The aging Senateurs are generally claimed to know very little about the subject matter of this law. The Assemblee Generale therefore, was  the key vote for getting the law through the legislature.

Source: Liberation

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) Sarkozy bends rules to get in  3-strikes law, iptegrity.com,13 May 2009.