France's three strikes won't work

27-05-2009

by Ralph Averbuch

France's three strikes law will prove that enacting isn't the same as implementing.

So France has very nearly brought into law what is perhaps the most draconian set of copyright infringement laws in the western world. It's a three strikes policy. If a French citizen is accused of downloading material deemed to be in breach of a party's copyright the person will be given three (presumably written) warnings. After that the French state can unilaterally disconnect this person from the net. In broad terms it might seem reasonable that copyright owners can hold people to account for consuming material for free that others have paid for. But there is currently no due process where the accused can face his accusers and challenge the alleged 'crime'. That's worrying because, as we have seen on innumerable occasions, governments and semi-state institutions have a terrible habit of being well behind the technological curve. It's entirely possible for even the non-technical to download tools to crack into another person's WiFi network and use it for illegal file-sharing. How will the French authorities confirm that the wrongdoer is the house owner and not a drive-by freeloader? Households can also have multiple PCs. Are parents to be disconnected for their children's behaviour? We have three competing factors at play here. Technological, cultural and commercial. There's a massive cultural change at work in the way we are consuming media and it looks as if the French authorities believe they can impose draconian copyright laws to contain it. But they don't understand the full implications of the technology or they would have realised that enacting the law and successfully applying it in the real world are two very different things.

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