Three-strikes back on the French Parliament agenda
As previously reported, the French parliament's upper chamber, the Senate, had already passed the proposed new laws, and the lower house, the Assembly, had voted in favour of most of the individual provisions within it. However, when the Assembly voted on the new legislation as a whole a low turnout of government supporting MPs led to the proposals being defeated. They will now have to be approved by both Senate and Assembly anew.
The French government are committed to forcing their 'Creation And Internet' laws, including the three-strikes system, through both chambers of parliament this time. However, the Easter defeat, while in theory just a delay, has given a boost to those groups who oppose the proposals, and who now claim that even some MPs within the ruling UMP party, who have drafted the proposals, are nervous about some of the provisions, in particular the three-strikes system.
The delay also means the final vote in the French parliament will now come after a recent vote in the European Parliament which passed an amendment to new European telecom regulations, which were originally drafted to support the three-strikes system, but which will now say "no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users without a prior ruling of the judicial authorities".
The whole point of the three-strike system is that content owners can tackle online piracy without having to take every suspected file-sharer to court. Individual file-sharer lawsuits are time-consuming and normally result in nominal damages being awarded, and the existence of such civil action by content owners has not proven to be a deterrent to other file-sharers. The three-strike system, which would be administered (in France anyway) by a government agency rather than a court, would give content owners a quicker, simpler and cheaper way to target persistent file-sharers and the threat of disconnection could possibly prove to be a bigger deterrent.
But some would argue that any system that cuts off an individual's net access without a court hearing would breach the aforementioned European telecoms regulation. Certainly the MEP who proposed the amendment, Guy Bono, reckons it would, and he is quoted as saying that the new Euro-rule ends all ambitions for a three-strike system being introduced in any European Union jurisdiction.
But the UMP party in France thinks otherwise, and President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been a big personal supporter of the 'Creation And Internet' proposals, has reportedly said he plans to have the new laws passed by his country's parliament by 14 May.
The content industries, meanwhile, continue to talk in support of Sarkozy and his 'Creation And Internet' laws. A group of music and movie companies have issued a statement calling on the French parliament to not get "abused by those who brandish a threat on liberties in front of a text which is mainly educational, preventive and dissuasive", while the national board of the Directors Guild Of America have "unanimously passed a resolution in support of France's 'Creation And Internet' law, which seeks to combat the growing problem of digital piracy through an education and warning system that would ultimately result in a temporary discontinuation of internet service for those people who repeatedly upload or download content illegally".
