France takes a hard line on piracy

France has passed the controversial “Hadopi” law, which will allow authorities to disconnect persistent illegal filesharers from the internet.

The Hadopi bill, named for the agency that will be set up to administer the law, was approved this week by the French Constitutional Council, which had rejected an earlier version of the law.

The “High authority” (Haute autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet” or Hadopi) will be operational by 2010, the government says. Illegal downloaders will get two warnings from Hadopi; on the third offence their case will be passed to a judge who can impose a fine and cut internet access for up to a year.

Even those not involved in piracy could have their connection cut if someone else in the household has been downloading illegal content, or their connection is hijacked because they failed to secure it. To add insult to possible injury, anyone forced offline must continue to pay for the service.

The Hadopi law has met with considerable resistance, but simply refused to die. Championed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Hadopi 1 was passed by Parliament back in May, but struck down in June by the Constitutional Council, which said that disconnection without recourse to the courts violated the French constitution. But the law bounced back a few months later with some changes designed to ease its passage: disconnection would now be implemented by the courts on a fast-track process similar to that used for parking fines.

Could this really be the end of the Hadopi saga? France’s new law comes into existance in the same week that Europe failed in its efforts to secure internet access as a fundamental human right.

Yesterday, the European Parliament dropped an amendment to its Telcoms Package that would have made it hard for countries to cut off illegal downloaders without court authority.

Amendment 138 originally read:

“… that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened where the ruling may be subsequent.”.

Without this amendment, Europe has effectively given its member states the right to regulate the internet as they see fit. France now has some of the toughest anti-piracy laws in the world, and the UK is thinking of following suit with a “three strikes” policy for disconnecting persistent offenders.

Tags: file sharing, piracy