[Infowarrior] - The insanity of France's anti-file-sharing plan

[Richard Forno]

The insanity of France's anti-file-sharing plan: L'État, c'est IFPI

By Eric Bangeman | Published: November 25, 2007 - 11:06PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071125-the-insanity-and-genius-of-fra
nces-anti-file-sharing-plan.html

It's hard to engage in file-sharing if you don't have any Internet access.
That's the threat behind a new memorandum of understanding between the
government, ISPs, and Big Content in France that would see repeat P2P
infringers lose their Internet connections. In exchange, the French music
industry would make its French-language archive freely available available
sans DRM. In addition, DVDs would be on store shelves within six months of a
film's theatrical release, instead of the current seven and a half months.

The proposal is backed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and arose from
the findings of a independent review commission appointed by Sarkozy shortly
after taking office. That commission was headed up by the chairman of French
consumer electronics retailer FNAC, Denis Olivennes.

Given his position, it's not surprising that Olivennes is no friend to ISPs
and fans of P2P. He recently authored La gratuité, c'est le vol: Quand le
piratage tue la culture, in which he argued that P2P not only harmed
retailers, as well as the music and film industries, but also directly
impacted French culture by reducing the amount of tax income from movies and
cable television. P2P users are killing French culture, he says. It should
be no surprise, then, that the plan's trade-offs fall almost entirely in the
favor of Big Content to the detriment of just about everyone else, including
people who don't use P2P software.

Like it or not, the total cost of Internet service will rise because French
ISPs have signed on to the plan. They will now spend time and (tax) money
enforcing copyright on their networks via expensive deep packet inspection
(DPI) software that will monitor traffic on their networks and look for
copyrighted content. Subscribers detected illicitly sharing or downloading
copyrighted material will receive warnings, requiring additional
administrative overhead. If the behavior continues, then Internet access
would be guillotined. Most of this will be carried out by a
government-funded independent authority overseen by a judge.

The IFPI was effusive in its praise for the proposal. "This is the single
most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have
seen so far," said IFPI CEO John Kennedy in a statement. "By requiring ISPs
to play a role in the fight against piracy, President Sarkozy has set an
example to others of how to ensure that the creative industries remain
strong in difficult markets so that they can remain major economic and
cultural contributors to society."

French consumer advocates aren't as excited. UFC Que Choisir, which has
attacked both Apple and the music industry over DRM restrictions in the past
while applauding another law that calls for the end of DRM lock-ins, called
the agreement "very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, antieconomic
and against the tide of the digital age," in a statement seen by Reuters.

The proposal looks to be an early Christmas present for the movie and music
industries‹and a major scrooging for French consumers. For the first time in
either Europe or North America, Big Content will be able to offload the
tiresome and expensive work of copyright enforcement to ISPs and the
commission called for by the law. If the proposal is approved by the French
parliament next year, proponents suggest it would go a long way towards
slowing the torrent of P2P traffic to a trickle.

Meanwhile, French Internet users will have all of their traffic subject to
monitoring by ISPs to ensure that content is not being pirated; that's not
good for privacy. And as is always the case with such technological
measures, there's always the potential for legitimate content, including the
increasing amount of legitimate P2P traffic, to be caught up in a copyright
enforcement driftnet. Sure, consumers are thrown a few bones‹DRM-free
archives, faster DVD releases, and no more massive fines for copyright
infringement‹but the tradeoff is harsh since it comes with a giant
government subsidy for Big Content's interests, paid for in lost privacy and
an expensive oversight organization.