French ISP Free Gives In, Will Send 3 Strikes Notices

from the too-bad dept

Well, it looks like the saga of the Hadopi loophole is now over. We had written how the French ISP 'Free' had been refusing to pass on Hadopi "three strikes" notices, realizing that the law did not mandate that ISPs pass on the notices, but the law did say that you couldn't have your connection disabled if the notices hadn't been sent. Not surprisingly, this upset the French government, which took the extraordinary step of simply decreeing a change to the law to require ISPs send on the notices. This seemed extreme, and potentially illegal.

While Free had initially indicated interest in fighting this, it's now given in and will send the letters. Apparently, French President Nicolas Sarkozy had threatened to "make an example" of ISPs who didn't send on the notices. Fitting, of course, that a law that avoids due process is changed without any due process.

Filed Under: france, hadopi, three strikes
Companies: free

France Gets Taxpayers To Subsidize Music Downloads

from the i'm-sure-they-want-that dept

Nicolas Sarkozy had talked in the past about taxing Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to fund the recording industry. Apparently, in the meantime, he's just going to tax citizens instead. The EU has apparently given approval to a plan that will have the French government paying half the cost of special music download cards, with the goal being to attract users to pay the half-price fee to get them using authorized music services. Of course, it seems worth pointing out that Sarkozy's wife is a recording artist, so it does seem a bit unfair for him to have taxpayers forking over money which is going to end up with his wife. There are, of course, also anti-competitive concerns when the French government is subsidizing specific music services, but the EU apparently claimed that the "benefits" of the plan outweighed those issues. What benefits? If there are benefits to offering music for less then, um, shouldn't the record labels just be lowering their prices?

Filed Under: downloads, france, music, subsidies

French Culture Minister Unilaterally Tries To Change Hadopi Rules To Close Loophole

from the that's-how-democracy-works? dept

We recently wrote about how the French ISP Free was using a loophole in the Hadopi "three strikes" rules to protect its subscribers. Basically, the law says that ISPs should pass along the notices, but does not have any penalties if the ISP does not pass the notices along to users. So Free simply chose not to pass along the notices, even if it did send user info to the agency. But the problem is that the law says that users can't be cut off unless they've been notified, so without the notification, there can be no kicking people off the internet, which was the entire point of Hadopi.

In response, it appears that French culture minister Frederic Mitterand decided to unilaterally decided to issue a "decree" clarifying Hadopi and extending the fines for not handing over info to not passing along the notices. Of course, that raises all sorts of questions about the French lawmaking process, and Free is insisting that such a decree, issued quickly with no review or vote is simply not legal. Also, it's been pointed out that EU law requires that members notify the EU regulatory bodies of any new laws that would punish ISPs if they don't comply -- and clearly this didn't happen in this case.

As Zeropaid points out in the link above, it is pretty clear that Free is playing a semantic game, and it's likely that the law will be changed eventually to close that loophole, but that certainly doesn't mean it's okay for the French culture minister to unilaterally change a law without any review or oversight, just because the original law makers left a loophole in.

Filed Under: france, frederic mitterand, hadopi, loopholes, three strikes
Companies: free

Sarkozy: We Must Regulate The Internet To Ensure Freedom

from the um,-what? dept

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has some weird ideas about the internet. The original champion of "three strikes" laws, which are now in place in France, he's defended such laws as defending freedom. That seems odd: kicking people off the internet defends freedom? It appears now that he's got "three strikes" in place, he wants to take that idea even further. He's talking up the importance of further regulating the internet, calling it a moral imperative, and that without correcting "the excesses and abuses" there is "no economy," "no life in society," and "no freedom." Yes, his message appears to be that, to give you freedom online, we must first take away your freedom online. Sarkozy has, in the past, advocated taxing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and giving that money directly to record labels. So, once again, it certainly appears that when Sarkozy means "freedom" he really means "freedom" for a few entrenched businesses (including one that his wife is heavily involved in) to keep their business models going "free" of competition and "free" from having to adapt to modern technologies.

Filed Under: france, internet, nicolas sarkozy, regulations

French ISP 'Free' Refusing To Send Out Hadopi Notices To Users [Updated]

from the but-does-that-still-count? dept

At the beginning of September, we noted that some French ISPs had indicated that, as the French three strikes process began, with the Hadopi agency sending out its tens of thousands of "first strike" notices, they would ignore the requests. It appears that may be happening. Apparently the French ISP "Free" (which, as I discovered last time I was in France and tried to connect to its WiFi, is not actually free) has decided that it will not pass along the warning notices to users:

"The law says that it is the Hadopi which has to send the warning 'for his own account and under its stamp, by electronic means, through the (ISPs)'. It never says how it should be sent 'through the ISPs'."

Furthermore, although ISPs have been given the job of identifying and matching up IP addresses with the alleged infringers' personal details (on pain of 1,500 euros per day per IP fine for failing to do so), there are no penalties in place for not sending out warnings.

"But 'Free' did not agree to Hadopi using its SMTP servers without a signed agreement, which apparently was refused, probably because they required payment or other forms of compensations."

The TorrentFreak article notes that other ISPs are complaining that Free is doing this to gain a competitive advantage with customers, but I'm not sure I buy that. After all, it doesn't sound like Free isn't handing over the users' personal info. They're just not letting users know about it. If anything, that could make Free seem worse to users, in that it's handing their info over to Hadopi for the purpose of the three strikes program, but not letting the users know that they have any strikes.

Update: Guillaume Champeau, who originally reported this story explains further in the comments:

The Hadopi law says that in order to face penalties before the court, Internet suscribers must have received at a least one previous warning by paper mail. - It also says that in order to send this paper mail, the HADOPI must have been noticed of new infrigements which must have occured within 6 months after an e-mail was sent. - Therefore, if the e-mail was never sent, no paper mail can be sent either, and the users can't face penalties. Currently the law does not mandate an ISP to send the e-mails. But it does mandate them to hand out personal infos.

So, it sounds like this does protect users, via a bit of a loophole in the Hadopi law. Even if Hadopi sends out the personal info, if the email isn't sent, then Hadopi can't take the person to court, and Free has no obligation under the law to actually send the email.

Filed Under: france, hadopi, three strikes
Companies: free

US Intelligence Agencies Angry At France Over Three Strikes; Worried It Will Drive Encryption Usage

from the strange-bedfellows dept

You may recall that, in the fight over the Digital Economy Act in the UK, those who were against the three strikes proposal had an unexpected ally: law enforcement. They were specifically worried that a three strikes plan would lead to more people using encryption, which would make it harder to spy on everyone.

It looks like the same thing happened in France. With Hadopi now underway and sending out its first warning letters, the news is leaking out that US intelligence agencies, like the NSA, "yelled" at the French government over the plan, for the same reason. They know that a three strikes law will only increase encryption usage, making it more difficult to spy on people. For a group that wants to wiretap the internet, that's a problem:

US intelligence agencies are concerned that it will only encourage file-sharers and others to arm themselves with the same encryption tools used by criminal networks, making their job of detecting threats and illegal activity that much harder as the use of such tools goes mainstream.

During a recent cryptography symposium in France they made their concerns known to their French counterparts, taking the time to "yell" at their French counterparts about Hadopi during a coffee break and make it clear that they are not happy.
They think it's wrong to pass legislation to fight the simple, though illegal, exchange of movies and music because it means file-sharers will simply equip themselves with strong encryption tools to avoid detection, and make both the copyright holders and the govt losers in the end.

Some are saying this is why we've never seen any real progress on three strikes laws in the US. Even as the Justice Department and the entertainment industry have a pretty cozy relationship these days, the law enforcement folks recognize that greater encryption makes it more difficult to spy on everyone.

Filed Under: encryption, france, intelligence agencies, three strikes

Was A French Court Correct In Blaming Google For Its Google Suggest Suggestions?

from the still-not-convinced dept

We recently wrote about yet another (the third one we know of) ruling in France that found Google liable for what "Google Suggest" suggested. Google Suggest, of course, is the autocomplete function that tries to guess what you're searching on, based on what other people searched on after typing the same letters. Of course, more recently, that's been expanded to Google's Instant Search, where it actually shows full results as you type. We suggested that the problem here was that French courts did not understand the technology.

Journalist Mitch Wagner, who I tend to agree with more often than not, claims that we got it wrong, and that the French courts do understand the technology perfectly fine: and they still decided to side against Google (and, separately, we should mention against Google's CEO, as if he had anything to do with the suggestions in question):

But actually the French court understands what's going on. Google raised just those issues in its defense, and the court disagreed. "The court ruling took issue with that line of argument, stating that 'algorithms or software begin in the human mind before they are implemented,' and noting that Google presented no actual evidence that its search suggestions were generated solely from previous related searches, without human intervention," according to Computerworld.

He goes on to suggest that it can (sort of) be compared to a product liability case, where if you make a product that does something "bad" (such as suggest libelous search results) that it should be your responsibility:

Is it appropriate for Google to build a search engine that automatically generates results with no intervention to be sure those results aren't libelous, defamatory, or otherwise harmful?

This is a problem that goes beyond people accused of crimes. Many companies are unhappy with the results that comes up when you search on industry terms. If you make hats, and you're not in the first page of results that come up when searching the word "hats," then you're dissatisfied with Google. Does that make Google wrong? Does it matter if your hats are, in fact, better and more popular than companies with search terms ranked higher?

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. I understand Wagner's point, but I think the French courts still don't really understand the issues. It's not a question of whether or not it's appropriate, it's a question of whether or not it's even possible. How does Google build a search engine that simply knows whether a suggestion might be considered by a court of law to be libelous? As for the different rankings, those are opinions, which should be protected speech (last we checked). If Google's results aren't good, that's an opening for another search engine. Blaming Google because you don't like how the algorithm works is still a mistake, and I don't think the French courts really recognize this at all, no matter what they say.

Filed Under: defamation, france, liability
Companies: google

French Courts Once Again Confused About Google Suggest; Blame Google For Suggested Searches

from the gotta-understand-the-algorithm dept

Not again. Earlier this year, we wrote about a couple of lawsuits in France involving companies that wanted to blame Google for the results that pop up via Google Suggest (the feature that simply looks at what you're typing, and suggests the most popular searches based on what you've typed). Tragically, we noted that the courts wanted to find Google liable for these suggestions, and it looks like yet another French court has made that same mistake. This is, quite clearly, blaming Google for what its users are doing. The algorithm for Google Suggest is just taking the aggregate results of what people are actually searching on, and using that to make suggestions. There's no editorial control by Google, and yet this court not only found Google liable for those suggestions, but ordered the removal of all the "offending" query suggestions. In this case, it involved a guy who had been convicted for "corruption of a minor," who got upset "because the plaintiff's name was returned in response to queries on search terms such as rape, satan worshipper, and other things." At some point, you hope that courts and politicians will understand the basics of how technology works, but it seems like we may be waiting a long, long time.

Filed Under: france, google suggest, liability
Companies: google

Leaked Report Admits That Hadopi First Strike Accusations Won't Be Reviewed For Accuracy

from the accuse-away! dept

As the French "three strikes" Hadopi process begins, with tens of thousands of notices being sent out to accused file sharers (their "first strike"), things may be even more ridiculous than previously assumed. Guillaume Champeau fills us in on the details of a leaked report from the French privacy commissioner (Google translation from the original French). Basically, the privacy commissioner CNIL admits that, due to the number of notices being sent, Hadopi will simply not be able to review the accusations for accuracy, and will need to accept the claims from TMG, the company hired by the entertainment industry to accuse people. Here's Champeau's summary:

"Rights holders have been authorized in June to collect IP addresses on P2P networks, by recruiting the services of the French company TMG. It will monitor P2P networks, store the IP addresses it believes illegally shares copyrighted works, and their rights holder customers will forward the ones they want to the French HADOPI.

Early this week, an internal report by the CNIL was leaked. The CNIL is the Privacy Commissioner in France. It is the Commission which has allowed rights holders to use the TMG services and collect IP addresses.

The report says that "due to the high number of expected cases (25 000 a day at first, then 150 000 a day), it is impossible for the [right holders' agents] to check the [infringement] reports one by one. Nonetheless, the system does not have particular control procedures, for instance by sampling, which would allow an agent to detect anomalies in a collection session".

It says that "the actions of the Hadopi will be limited to accepting or denying the transmitted findings, without the ability to check them. The first steps of the "three strikes" process will therefore lay only upon the collection operated by the TMG system".

Despite these concerns, the CNIL did authorize the right holders to collect the IP addresses, and did not oppose the 3 strikes process by the Hadopi.

Read that bold part carefully. What this is saying is that despite the fact that you can be kicked off the internet based solely on accusations, not convictions, and despite all of the problems with false accusations and the fact that an IP address alone does not accurately identify an individual, and despite the fact that the massive number of notices being sent out mean that there will surely be false positives, the only people reviewing these notices to make sure they're accurate will be employed by the agent hired by the copyright holders themselves. Due process? It's dead.

Filed Under: france, hadopi, oversight, review, three strikes
Companies: tmg

Hadopi Begins Issuing Tens Of Thousands Of 'Notices' For Infringement In France

from the begin-the-takedowns dept

Almost a year after the law officially went into effect, the French Hadopi organization, which is responsible for managing the "three strikes" process to kick file sharers offline after three accusations (not convictions) of unauthorized file sharing, has started sending out notices. Initially, it's sending out approximately 10,000 per day, with plans to ramp up to 50,000 per day. Already overburdened ISPs will be responsible for handing over the info on those accused within eight days, or they could get fined 1,500 euros per day per IP address. That could add up quickly. Some ISPs have threatened to ignore or fight the demands for info, but it's unclear if any ISP is willing to stand up to that kind of liability...

Filed Under: france, hadopi, isps