Last November saw the French government, lead by President Nicolas Sarkozy, impose a law which meant that anyone suspected of using P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing software to spread copyrighted videos and music illegally over the Internet could have their connection severed.
While France is the first country in Europe, and so far the only one, to have imposed such harsh measures, the UK has started to experiment with a similar scheme, although Virgin Media Broadband customers are being educated rather than cut off… so far.
Spreading Across Europe
But now it seems France wants to impose their will on the rest of Europe, and according to The Register, is suggesting an amendment to the pan-European Telecoms Package which would ban anyone who consistently flouts the law from connecting to the Web.
France now has a three strikes and you’re out policy, and obviously wants the rest of Europe to tag along with these draconian measures.
Sarko’s opinion is that “there is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone”, which is fair enough, but surely obtaining proof of any wrongdoing would be a positive first step in anything other than a police state.
Unlikely To Be Passed
The legislation is even having trouble getting passed in France, with fierce critics both within the country and outside. So the chances of this getting ratified by all the member states of Europe is unlikely.
However, the fact that France is even promoting this change to the law for a whole continent is a worrying development. Illegal file-sharing is wrong, but how you deal with it isn’t to ban everyone you suspect of wrongdoing.
Conclusions
What’s more, if this change to the law did get through, then it would make a high proportion of residents in the European Union criminals, and liable to action, almost overnight, as like it or not, file-sharing is rife, and BitTorrent tracking websites are becoming ever more popular.
However, even if people are stopped from using file sharing software they could still stream music, movies and
TV shows from sites like YouTube, with the help of pirate directories like PeekVid.
There is a full and frank look at the issues involved with these proposals over at panGloss, a cyberlaw blog by Lilian Edwards, which is definitely worth a read if you want a more detailed analysis from a legal standpoint.
