The CopyKat

Maurice Ravel in 1925

There were a myriad of reports that almost 90 years after it was first performed in Paris, the copyright in Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" expired on May 1st. Ravel died in 1937.  Written in 1928 and performed on November 22nd of that year at Paris' Opera Garnier, the symphonic work, which grows steadily louder as it progresses, was originally a ballet piece ordered by Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein, a friend and sponsor of the French composer Ravel and famously was danced to by Olympic gold medal winning ice skaters Torvill & Dean in 1984.  More here. HOWEVER ...... France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (SACEM) has now been presented with a dossier which seeks to take advantage of a legal loophole which could extend Bolero’s international copyright - worth an estimated €1m a year - for another 20 years. The challenge is based on the fact that Bolero was originally a score for a ballet and whilst it is not disputed that Ravel wrote the music, the challengers claim that the original choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska, and the director and scene-maker, Alexandre Benois should be credited as joint authors. As Benois died in 1960 - the argument is thus the final term of copyright must run from HIS death? SACEM, the body that administers copyright payments in France, said that it had rejected the claims as baseless. The copyright of Bolero belonged to the composer Ravel alone, the organisation told the Independent.

Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, overwhelmingly passed a bill for a new Act on Collective Management Organisations (CMO Act) on Thursday, April 28. The new law replaces the 50-year-old Copyright Administration Act. More here. 

Canadian singer/songwriter Nelly Furtado, who has sold more than 40m records worldwide is the latest artiste to hit out at Google's seeming reluctance to 'play fair' with payments to artistes from YouTube streaming - rightly pointing out that as a technology company YouTube has been fairly poor at developing software that can identify and remove infringing content. In a blog the Grammy Award-winner discusses the recent wave of artists standing up to YouTube over royalty payouts – and adds her name to the cause. 

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. where the court will rule on the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act [text]. The case deals with designs on cheerleader uniforms, but the case is expected to have a broader impact. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had ruled that Varsity Brand's designs were copyrightable. Image by Jeff Hitchcock from Vancouver, BC, Canada.

A new bill in the U.S. House of Representatives is being introduced in Congress this week which would give producers, engineers and mixers a piece of the digital royalty pie. The Allocation for Music Producer Act, or AMP Act (H.R. 1457), is being formally introduced by congressmen from both sides of the aisle: Reps. Joe Crowley (D-New York) and Tom Rooney (R-Florida). The AMP Act would create a statutory right for producers to receive royalties that would be managed through CMO SoundExchange.

An Australian government commission, the Productivity Commission, has published a new reports on copyright exploring how well Australia's intellectual property laws are working. Titled  "Copy(not)right" you can probably guess that the report is not very sympathetic to current regime and holds the opinion that Australia’s copyright arrangements are "weighed too heavily in favour of copyright owners, to the detriment of the long-term interests of both consumers and intermediate users. Unlike other IP rights, copyright makes no attempt to target those works where ‘free riding’ by users would undermine the incentives to create. Instead, copyright is overly broad; provides the same levels of protection to commercial and non-commercial works; and protects works with very low levels of creative input, works that are no longer being supplied to the market, and works where ownership can no longer be identified."  More on TechDirt. 

The New York Appellate Court has agreed to rule on the case which Flo & Eddie from 60's band The Turtles have brought against Sirius XM Radio over the issue of whether the copyright owners of recordings made before 1972 have a common law right to make radio stations and others pay for their use. The case has been referred to the Court of Appeals from a federal appeals court. Federal law established limited copyright protections to recordings after Feb. 15, 1972, while preserving state law property rights on earlier recordings.

Green members of the French National Assembly have voted to strike Hadopi from France's lawbooks - and with just 7 MPs in the house, they had  enough members to see the motion to remove the law from the statute books in 2022 passed. It's unlikely the motion will pass the Senate, but the Greens have used the opportunity to call attention what they say is the "uselessness and expense of Hadopi." French President François Hollande called for the end of Hadopi before his election, a position he later retracted.


The leaders of two major Android app piracy groups have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges. Aaron Blake Buckley (22) and Gary Edwin Sharp II (29), ran the Applanet and SnappzMarket groups before they were shut down by the FBI in 2012. U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. of the Northern District of Georgia will pass sentence in August.

And finally - The CopyKat's profound thanks to qurgh lungqIj who made some wise and lucid comments, correcting my headline for the article on the Klingon Language. I have never been advised on and in Klingon - thankfully this time with translations into English! Forbes have also published a very interesting article on WHY the film companies behind the Star Trek series and films (CBS and Paramount) are taking action - having previously ignored or tolerated fan fiction, fan films and the like. 

Third Strike Struck Out

By decree dated July 8th (yesterday) and published in today's Official Journal, the French government has severely limited the three-strikes graduated response scheme put in place to combat P2P piracy.

Article 2 of the decree repeals the provision of the Intellectual Property Code that allowed a court to suspend a person's internet access for up to one month where such person had been shown to be negligent in securing his internet access (so-called "négligence caractérisée").  It will be recalled that this was the legal concept introduced by the HADOPI laws in reference to the internet subscriber and his liability irrespective of the identity of the actual copyright infringer.

It should however be pointed out that this decree does not appear to affect the court's power to order internet suspension (for up to one year) as a complementary penalty for those who are actually guilty of copyright infringement.

Link to decree here

HADOPI: Where Things Stand

                                                                    
News has emerged of the results of France's so-called HADOPI law, the three-strikes law designed to fight peer-to-peer piracy and, more generally, illegal downloading.

According to a parliamentary reply made by the Minsiter of Justice, the fruits of the 2009 statutes (there are two) are as follows:

1,150,000 first warnings, 100,000 second warnings and 340 files in third stage with 14 having been forwarded to the local prosecutors.

Of the 14 cases being prosecuted at the local level:
  

 - 9 are still being investigated; 

- 1 is being scheduled for court;

- 1 has been filed without a trial; and

- 3 have given rise to definitive judgements, broken down as follows:

- 1 acquittal;

- 1 conviction (fine of €150); and

- 1 conviction (no sentence due to circumstances).

French minister of culture speaks of Google, Amazon and Loi Hadopi

Aurélie Filippetti

Earlier this week Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera featured an interview with French minister of culture Aurélie Filippetti. 

As her surname clearly suggests, Mme Filippetti is of Italian descent. This week she was in Umbria to attend some celebrations in honour of her grandfather Tommaso, who left Italy after WWI to work as a miner, first in Luxembourg and then in France. 

Corriere secured an interview with Mme Filippetti prior to her arrival in Italy. On that occasion, the Minister had the chance to clarify France's position as regards topics which are of sure interest to Google, Amazon, copyright enthusiasts and users of copyright-protected materials alike. 

As was reported by The 1709 Blog last month, France is thinking of following Germany and adopt a piece of legislation which would require news aggregation sites such as Google News to pay royalties on the newspapers' snippets and headlines that they display. As readers will remembers, Google is not particularly happy about this, and has indeed threatened to exclude French media sites from search results if France goes ahead with plans to make search engines pay for content. While the overall situation is heating up in Europe, in Brazil 154 members of the Brazilian National Association of Newspapers have already opted out from Google News. 

En garde Googlé!

Filippetti highlighted that culture is one of the most important resources to European economies and it would be foolish not to develop and sustain it. Hence, if by the end of this year French, Italian and German publishers do not achieve an agreement with Google, in January 2013 France will adopt a law which would require Google to pay royalties on the contents displayed on its News service. The underlying idea is that those who profit from the distribution of contents must also contribute economically to their creation. If this is true for TV networks, the same should apply also to providers, websites and digital platforms, said the Minister.

Not the kind of dumping
Amazon is interested in 

Filippetti also spoke of how internet giants like Amazon are threatening traditional publishers, eg Gallimard. She claimed that, although it is likely that Amazon will soon have a super-dominant position in Europe, the Commission does not seem to care. This is because this seems more interested in contrasting certain behaviours of small publishers who are just trying to cope with Amazon's threatening presence, rather than enquiring on Luxembourg-based giant whose business model is based on distance sales and unacceptable fiscal strategies involving price distribution dumping.

Mme Filippetti also spent a few words on controversial Loi Hadopi (on which see here, here, here, here ...), and said that the fight against piracy is best served not by laws like Hadopi, but by the development of fully licensed services such as Spotify and Deezer, although the royalties currently paid by these services are too low and should be increased.

Following this interview, there seems to be a lot to think about, as those addressed by Mme Filippetti are all topics which are currently at the centre of attention a bit everywhere in Europe ... What do readers think?

Innocence of the act is no defence

It seems that a 40-year-old Frenchman who was summoned to court in France under the French anti piracy ‘HADOPI’ three strikes legislation for illegally downloading pirated music, has found himself on the receiving end of a conviction – even though it was his wife who illegally downloaded the two Rihanna songs in question. 

PC World report that Alain Prevost was fined for failing to secure his Wi-Fi network after Prevost self-incriminated himself by admitting he knew his wife illegally downloaded the songs. Under French law the “three strikes” are as follows: first, an email message is sent to the alleged offender: Secondly if the alleged offender illegally downloads copyrighted material again within the next six months, a certified letter is sent to the alleged offender: Thirdly if the alleged offender does not stop downloading illegally within one year from the receipt of that letter, the offender's Internet Service Provider (ISP) is required to suspend their Internet access. 

According to TorrentFreak, content owners have identified a total of three million French IP addresses associated with piracy since October 2010. Of these three million IP addresses identified, 1.15 million were eligible for a first strike, 102,854 eligible for a second strike, and 340 eligible for a third. Of those 340 just 14 were referred to French prosecutors. Prevost’s defence  (apart from not actually committing the infringing acts) was that whilst he did receive the first and second communications, he actually took himself offline as he was divorcing his wife, and whilst prosecutors say he did not respond at all, he said he did respond to the third letter and his wife’s lawyer sent a letter to the HADOPI agency. Prevost also says that as he was offline he received no further emails from HAPOI. He was then summoned to Paris to explain himself, but he didn't want to pay the cost of travel for such a (what he assumed) trivial matter. He was then summoned to his local Police station and despite explaining it was his wife who was the guilty party, ended up in court. 

The report says that even with his wife (ex-wife?) as a witness, Prevost was found guilty by le Tribunal de Police de Belfort of failing to secure his Wi-Fi network, and was fined 150 euros. The court did not terminate his Internet connection. If any of our French readers can add to the detail of this report by way of comment, this blogger would be very grateful. 

Hadopi "failure" a warning for the UK?

The French government is counting the cost of administering the ‘Law Hadopi’ copyright enforcement: Hadopi, the body charged with hunting down repeat infringers under France’s three-strikes law, has sent a million warning e-mails and 99,000 registered letters although just 134 cases have been examined for prosecution and no cases have as yet resulted in an Internet user being disconnected. Hadopi has a payroll of over 60 and annual costs have now reached a reported 12 million Euros,  prompting French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti to describe the system as “unwieldy, uneconomic and ultimately ineffective”. Filippetti told Le Nouvel Observateur that Hadopi had also failed in a key part of its mission, to foster legal content to replace illegal downloads prompting the French government to  launch a consultation to re-examine it's response Internet piracy with Filippetti talking of a post-Hadopi future. 

In a separate interview, Pierre Lescure, head of the commission into the “Future of Piracy” and a former boss at Canal+, endorsed Filippetti’s stance, saying he attaches “great importance” to the development of legal offers, and that the temptations to piracy are so great “only a priest would not yield” saying “The error of Hadopi was to focus on the penalty”, telling Le Nouvel Observateur. “If one starts from the penalty, it will fail”, adding that the sanction of disconnection is, for now, unenforceable.

The French system had been heralded as a success by many in the content industries who pointed to a reduction in online piracy and illegal downloading of music and films – although a January 2011 poll in France indicated that 49% of French Internet users continue to illegally download music and video.  The obvious reluctance of the Minister and the commission head to support Hadopi is a glum reminder for supporters of the three strikes provisions in the UK’s Digital Economy Act -  even if implemented in the UK it seems a  three strikes scheme might be an expensive industry funded failure. 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/06/hadopi_under_fire/

France claims 50% drop in online piracy from Hadopi

A new report on the effectiveness of the French three-strikes ‘Hadopi’ anti-piracy law claims that it has managed to cut Internet piracy in half in 2011. Well I imagine it would, as it’s from the Hadopi office itself, and as Torrentfreak points out the Report is “conveniently written in English so it can be used by lobbyists all around the world”,

The Report says that “Benchmarking studies covering all of the sources available shows a clear downward trend in illegal P2P downloads. There is no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads.” The report goes on to cite a variety of statistics ranging from a 29 percent decrease in visits to “pirate” sites in 2011, to a 66 percent drop in illegal file-sharing traffic in France in the same period. Impressive figures indeed, and Hadopi correlates this to the French three-strikes law.

However there is no corresponding rise in digital sales in France and Torrentfreak asks “[if] the entertainment industry has claimed that digital piracy is the main cause for the gradual decline in revenues ...... one would expect that the revenues are soaring, right? But they’re not” and points out that “highly profitable CDs are being replaced by less profitable MP3s, subscription services and free streaming services such as YouTube”.

More at http://torrentfreak.com/french-three-strikes-law-slashes-piracy-but-fails-to-boost-sales-120330/

Hadopi enters first round of the "third strike" phase

Hadopi, the French authority responsible for the protection of content owner’s rights on the Internet, has revealed that it has now sent its first batch of files of Internet users suspected of illegally downloading films and music protected by copyright law to the French public prosecutor’s office. The public prosecutor’s office must now decide whether or not to instigate legal proceedings against the repeat offenders as the final part of the French ‘Three strikes’ or graduated response programme. All of those accused will already have had a warning email and if they continued to infringe, a further letter sent by registered post and email. Punishment includes a fine of EUR1,500 (USD1,971) and the initial suspension of the individual’s Internet account for a period of up to a month. All decisions are made by a court.

At the end of December, 822,014 Internet users had been sent a first warning, 68,343 had received the "second strike", the registered letter, and 165 repeat offenders had been placed under investigation. In January 2011 research showed that despite the new law, 49% of French internet users continued to illegally download music and films.

http://www.tax-news.com/news/Frances_Hadopi_Submits_First_Case_Load_For_Prosecution____54049.html

HADOPI: news hot off the press

From one of the 1709 Blog team's new members, Asim Singh, comes some pretty hot news from France. As Asim explains:

"Just days after President Sarkozy expressed his firm desire to update the HADOPI law to enable this body to act beyond its original P2P file-sharing mandate to reach DDL (direct downloading) and streaming sites, and one week after the CJEU’s seminal Scarlet ruling, news emerged in France that three professional bodies representing film producers (Association des producteurs du cinéma), distributors (Fédération nationale des distributeurs de films) and video publishers (Syndicat de l’édition video numérique) have taken matters into their own hands.

Availing themselves of the provisions of a section of the French Intellectual Property Code that was part of the HADOPI I law (Act of 12 June 2009), the APC, FNDF and SEVN have issued a writ against the major internet access providers (Orange, Free, Numericable, etc.) as well as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft seeking their cooperation in “disappearing” four websites (Allostreaming.com, Alloshowtv.com, Alloshare.com et Allomovies.com) with which they take issue. Section L.336-2 reads as follows:.

“In the presence of an infringement of copyright or a neighbouring right due to [“occasionné par” in French] the content of an online public communication service [a website], the High Court, ruling in the form of référés [ a specific form of legal proceedings] may order, upon action by rightsholders [or representative bodies] any measures appropriate to prevent or put an end to such infringement against any person capable of contributing to remedying the situation.”

The case-law on this provision is not exactly legion. The Court of Appeals of Paris handed down a decision on 3 May 2011 in which the provision was relied upon against Google Suggest and its habit of suggesting terms such as “torrent”, “megaupload” and “rapidshare”; the Court held that the requirements set out by the provision were not satisfied in that Google Suggest was merely a tool and was not itself the source of infringement as required by Section L.336-2.

The first hearing in the new case is scheduled for December 15, 2011".

Australian content owners looks to courts for three strikes law

Australia's Federal Court is expected to fast-track a decision in a case brought by AFACT (the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) on behalf of a consortium of film and TV companies against the Australian internet service provider iiNet. The case centres on the ISP’s liability for illegal file-sharing committed by its customers. AFACT are suing for damages, and want iiNet to be forced to disconnect any customers it knows are illegally sharing music online. In France and Taiwan a ‘three strikes’ law is already in place and in the UK a similar regime is planned as part of the new Digital Economy Bill which Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw believes will become law before the next election. Controversy still surrounds the role of ISPs and mobile companies in regulating their customers illegal activities, and in the UK Talk Talk’s boss Charles Dunstone has said he might fight the three-strikes law in court if his lobbying efforts to stop the anti-piracy system becoming law fails.

In all the countries where the new system is in place it has been brought in by the legislature, although in the US MGM v Grokster held that those who induce infringment are liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. In Australia it seems that the content industries are looking to a civil action, hoping that a successful action against an internet provider over the issue will set an important precedent – which the legislature could then formalize. There is ,of course, no guarantee that the claim will succeed. In the UK the BPI have been hesitant to take a civil law action against the organisers of the Oink file sharing service, accepting a case would probably have to go to the Supreme Court for a final ruling. Indeed criminal charges against founder Alan Ellis failed in the Crown Court and a recent claim by the IFPI against Baidu in China for providing links to infringing sites failed in the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court.

AFACT and iiNet had both presented their arguments in court last October and a ruling on the matter was not expected until later this year. However it was announced yesterday that a judgment will now be made next Thursday. Following the court hearings last Autumn, iiNet's CEO Michael Malone told reporters he was confident his company would win the case, saying: "We do not, and never have supported, encouraged or authorised illegal sharing or downloading of files in breach of the copyright laws". Even if iiNet win, it is likely the government will give some time to reviewing copyright rules, which might result in a three-strikes system being introduced in all events - although I imagine Australian ISPs and mobile companies will be as vocal as Dunstone has been in the UK, telling reporters that if the Digital Economy Bill does become law his company will refuse to send out warning letters and will consider "all options" for challenging three-strikes through the courts saying "I think there is a problem if an industry thinks its business model will be saved by legislation. While the music industry focuses on getting these laws through, it won't be concentrating on reinventing its business - which it obviously needs to do as its model is out of date. Its customers have gone on strike and turned to piracy because the old model doesn't work. There is no need to pursue this letter-sending and disconnection policy, when [record companies] can just individually prosecute people who have violated copyright rules".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7079982/TalkTalk-would-fight-Digital-Economy-Bill-in-court.html
http://newsblog.thecmuwebsite.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/8461879.stm

Hadopi Part II - the return of three strikes ...

France's much debated internet piracy law, the so called loi Hadopi which introduces a ‘three strikes’ approach to persistent illegal downloaders and fileswappers and which would allow authorities to disconnect repeat infringers, has passed through the lower house of parliament in a revised form. The law, supported by President Sarkozy, was passed by 285 votes to 225, with the Socialists, Greens and other left-wing parties opposing it and the ruling UMP party voting in favour. The bill must still be approved by the French parliament and may still face another challenge in the constitutional court.

A previous version of the law, approved by parliament in June, was rejected by France's constitutional court who said that it wasn’t happy with proposed new body that would have had the power to cut Internet access ruling that the new body could only have the power to issue warnings and that any disconnections could only be ordered by a judge. Record companies, film producers and French artists have supported the bid to crack down on Internet piracy, which recording industry body SNEP estimates has destroyed 50 percent of the value of the French recorded music market in six years but consumer groups have objected strongly and critics, including the Socialists, say the law will be easily subverted by anyone determined to download content online. Under the new version of Hadopi, the new authority will investigate suspected cases of piracy and will have the power to issue two written warnings before a judge can order an Internet connection to be disconnected and a fine of up to 30,000 euros ($43,900). The law will also oblige anyone with a Wi-Fi connection to block non-authorized users from using the connection.

In the UK, the topic is equally divisive; After (Lord) Peter Mandelson suggested that the UK could adopt a similar three strikes approach, a sharp divide opened up between the record and film industries (who strongly supported the move) and the Featured Artists Coalition, the British Academy Of Songwriters, the Music Managers Forum and the Music Producers Guild who were far more worried about the effect of content owners suing fans. Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Dave Rowntree (Blur), Billy Brag and Ed O'Brien (Radiohead) are spearheading the FAC's alternative approach which acknowledges that file sharing can damage record sales but can also stimulate the sale of records, downloads, merchandise and concert tickets and cross generations with Mason saying "the last thing we want to be doing is to go to war with our fanbase. Filesharing means a new generation of fans for us".

But now Lily Allen and Patrick Wolf have said they are not convinced by the FAC’s position and Allen, in particular, says that it's all well and good for FAC supporters like O'Brien and Mason to oppose tougher measures against net users who steal music because they've already made their money. Allen, writing on her MySpace blog said: "Mason, O'Brien and the Featured Artists Coalition say that file-sharing's '”like a sampler, like taping your mate's music, but mix tapes and recording from the radio are actually very different to the file sharing that happens today ... in digital land pirated tracks are as good quality as bought tracks, so there's not a need to buy for better quality. The Featured Artist Coalition also says file-sharing's fine because it 'means a new generation of fans for us'. This is great if you're a big artist at the back end of your career with loads of albums to flog to a new audience, but emerging artists don't have this luxury. Basically the FAC is saying 'we're alright, we've made it, so file-sharing's fine', which is just so unfair to new acts trying to make it in the industry". Allen went on to say "If this sounds like I'm siding with the record [company] bosses, I'm not. They've been naive and complacent about new technology - and they've spent all the money they've earned on their own fat salaries not industry development ... [and] I don't think what's out there [ie legitimate digital services] is perfect. It's stupid that kids can't buy anything on the internet without credit, forcing them to steal Mum's credit card or download illegally. It's this kind of thing that the record company bosses, artists, broadband providers and government should be sitting down and discussing. [But] file-sharing's not okay for British music. We need to find new ways to help consumers access and buy music legally, but saying file-sharing's fine is not helping anyone - and definitely not helping British music. I want to get people working together to use new digital opportunities to encourage new artists".

Patrick Wolf, who recently released an album funded by fan-to-band investment company Bandstocks, echoed Allen saying on his own MySpace blog: "I don't have a Liberace helicopters and limousine lifestyle. I'm currently deciding whether I spend the last of my earnings this year from touring on recording the string and choir section of my new album or on the rent until December - just an example of how a lot of other musicians have it". Saying "I dreamt as a teenager I would be able to buy a house one day, somewhere peaceful so that I could focus on writing and composing and perhaps set up a gorgeous studio with all the instruments I have collected to record and produce other bands. In the early 2000's it seemed likely, but file-sharing means that most musicians will probably just make ends meet their whole life now and most musicians dreams will have to be put aside for need for part time work and doing the odd gig and free download-only single made on Garageband".

Stuck in the middle of all of this is UK Music, the cross-sector music body headed up by ex Understone frontman, Radio Authority member and record label executive Feargal Sharkey who somehow needs to bring together the diverse views of it's membership – which includes labels, retailers, publishers, managers and artists. UK Music issued a new (somewhat vague) statement trying to demonstrate some unity on the issue saying "In context of an evolving licensed digital music market, we believe that government intervention is extremely welcome and that, subject to assessment, [media regulator] OfCom should be granted appropriate and proportionate powers as directed by the Secretary of State" although Sharkey added "Like all of society, like all creative businesses, the UK's commercial music industry reflects a wide spectrum of viewpoints and opinions. Discussions over recent weeks have drawn us much closer together and helped us to realise with greater certainty our shared vision of the future. We continue to welcome the government's support and intervention, both of which will be vital to ensure that those who create and invest in music have the opportunity to deliver their full potential and reap the benefits, rewards and promises of an ever-evolving digital marketplace".

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE58E5DE20090915
CMU Daily 16 September 2009 http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/

Photo: Nick Cordes (@ Glastonbury 2009)

STOP PRESS: loi Hadopi struck down

The French Constitutional Council has ruled that the country's controversial Création et Internet law (the loi Hadopi), which would disconnect repeat online copyright infringers, is unconstitutional. The "three strikes" law proposed to establish a High Authority to oversee a graduated response programme: rightsholders would investigate, then submit complaints to the High Authority, which would take action. Warnings would be passed to ISPs, who would forward them to customers; after two such warnings, the subscriber could be disconnected and placed on a nationwide "no Internet" blacklist.

Full decision here, in French
For further news and views see Ars Technica, The Guardian, The Register,

More comment to follow...

Loi Hadopi back in business

It now appears that the French have passed the Hadopi (the law against illegal file sharing: see earlier posts here, here, here and here) which failed to pass first time as not enough representatives were present). A short review can be found, in French, in Le Soir here. The law still needs to pass the senate tomorrow.

Thanks, Estelle Derclaye, for the tip-off!

End of the road for Hadopi?

It seems that the French loi Hadopi's "three strikes and you're out" proposals for serious copyright-infringing file sharers have not warmed the hearts of the European Union's parliamentarians, who believe that the striking off of an internet user for copyright infringement is something that should only be done by judicial authority. See here for further (French) information (thanks, Hugo Cox, for sending this in).

Le Loi Hadopi

The Register has provided English-language coverage of today's breaking news that France has all but passed the controversial 'three-strikes-and-you're-out' law, designed to stamp out rampant file-sharing and illegal downloading of copyright-protected works. The new law is nicknamed the loi Hadopi, because it creates a "High Authority" (Haute autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet), which will monitor and regulate the use of the internet in France. According to The Register,

"The principle behind the law is simple. Anyone suspected of illegal downloading of material on the internet will receive two letters: a first and a second warning. The first warning will recommend that the user check to make sure that no one is surfing on the back of an unsecured Wi-Fi connection: but it will also point out that it is the subscriber’s responsibility to make sure their net access is properly safeguarded".