HADOPI: 3 Strikes Law Gets Its Own Strike
The French Constitutional Court Wednesday struck down the provisions of the HADOPI “graduated sanction” law that would have required Internet service providers to cut off subscribers access (while continuing to take their payments) after repeat warnings of copyright infringement.
The Court’s ruling recognizes the importance of Internet access and the necessity of due process — before access is cut off:
12. Whereas under Article 11 of the Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789: “The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this freedom in cases determined by law” that in the current state of communications and given the widespread development of communication services to the public online and the importance of these services for participation in democratic life and to the expression of ideas and opinions, this right includes freedom to access these [Internet] services;
See more at La Quadrature du Net.
Although French legislators say they will revise the law to leave its graduated warnings, the stripping of its automatic termination provisions is an important recognition that copyright cannot trump democratic communication.
UPDATE: While preparing for my SouthEast LinuxFest talk, it occurred to me that this is a good example of the power of generative demonstration: The hundreds of thousands of users participating in democratic communications via the Internet are all part of the wave that helped the Constitutional Court to see the Internet as a critical medium for speech and its access as a core human right. Five years ago, this decision would be unlikely, five years from now, it will seem inevitable.
Wendy,
Sadly, the Hadopi story is not over. The political story revolves around a promise made by our president to famous french pop stars and actors, many of whom supported his candidacy. The view of the government is therefore that whereas the constitutional court invalidated the process put in place by the Hadopi law to punish piracy, it didn’t invalidate the principle of punishing them.
As a consequence, the government is exploring ways to make copyright infringements an offense punished by a systematic fine just like road infractions. This would (if agreed to by the constitution) allow the government to push forward with a process that doesn’t need the involvement of a judge and court, which is the core aspect that they want to push forward.
Interestingly, as the UK government is now going down that route fast, British telcos and ISPs have been very vocal against the intended procedure whereas, with the exception of Free/Iliad in France the telecom players stayed mostly silent on the issue. Even more strangely, Orange in the UK is very vocal against three-strikes whereas Orange in France gave lip support to the government’s plans…
You can read more of my own thinking at the time here: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017399148027573387600%3Akffnbwih8rw&ie=UTF-8&q=hadopi&sa=Search
Comment by Benoit Felten — September 13, 2009 @ 2:04 pm