This week saw a landmark move by the French
government which could see illegal file sharers, of music, and
eventually movies, and television shows, to have their Internet
connections severed, with no trial, and no right to
reply.
Users
thought to be illegally sharing files will be booted from the
Internet, with or without proof.
It seems France is condoning
a new
deal between the RIAA
and its Internet access providers without thought to the consequences
this could have around the globe.
Davids Vs Goliath
Here in the US, persecuted ‘Davids’ around the country have
been
taking a stand against this ‘Goliath’, fighting back by counter-suing
and generally standing up to the RIAA bully tactics.
Do I think illegal
file-sharing is wrong? Of course. But I also think that proof should be
required of the alleged file sharing, and so far the RIAA has failed to
show proof in 95% of their lawsuits.
That doesn’t even begin to touch
on the way the lawsuits are filed in the first place, and against whom
(the elderly who don’t have computer access, children, parents of
teenagers, college students, the disenfranchised).
A Decisive Moment?
French
President, Nicolas
Sarkozy, had this to say about the landmark
decision: [the deal is a] “decisive moment
for the future of a civilised Internet”.
How can a decision made in France affect American computer
users? It
is doubtful the impact will be a direct one.
It is much more
likely
that the precedent set by this will encourage the RIAA
to redouble its efforts here in the States and give anti-net neutrality
politicians and Internet service providers more angles from which to
push the bounds of privacy and bans on legal file sharing.
Threatened By Net Firms
According to the BBC website from which we sourced
the story :
Net firms will monitor what
their
customers are doing and pass on information about persistent pirates to
the new independent body.Those identified will get a
warning and then
be threatened with either being cut off or suspended if they do not
stop illegal file-sharing.
On the face of things, the change for French computer users
looks
benign. Loss of Internet access certainly sounds more benign
and
affordable that the current system of fines and jail employed in most
countries.
This sounds especially appealing on the face of
things if
you are one of the disenfranchised currently being targeted by the RIAA
for illegal file sharing that you aren’t even guilty of.
Sharing Our Private Information
The snag for me comes in the clause that allows the sharing of
our
private information between the RIAA, Internet services providers,
record companies and the government.
This bothers me because the RIAA
has not yet been able to prove illegal file sharing has
occurred.
Anyone can log on to your WiFi network, for example, if you aren’t
savvy enough to protect it, and few people are.
That means you can get blamed for a random users borrowing
your
access to get files illegally.
That hardly seems fair or
logical, and
until unauthorized use of private networks, hacking and other issues
that can create false identifiers for illegal sharing are accounted
for, it will only create more false positives for illegal file sharing.
A Band Aid Solution
This band-aid solution ignores the changes in the music
industry.
The world has already moved on to a mostly Web 2.0 platform, with Web
3.0 not far behind.
Better than continuing to attack the average
computer user for rolling with the changes and moving to an online only
environment faster than the RIAA and music industry has would be
figuring out how to monetize the new model, before it is too
late.
Leslie Poston is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
