France breaks out piracy ban hammer

[Shrygue]

via Computer and Video Games


A new anti-piracy system revealed by the French government will work to block anyone who's busted downloading or uploading copyrighted material.

The new system comes as part of an increased effort in France to crack on the growing problem of internet-related piracy, lead by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

The system will apparently warn users first, giving them a notice that illegal file sharing has been detected and threatens to suspend or terminate their internet connection if they don't stop.

According to Techtree, music and audio-visual producers, as well as internet service providers and public authorities have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in support of the campaign.

Could this initiative make the jump over the English Channel? Quick, stop the torrents!

[Veskgar]

Major attack on torrent sites lately. Its a shame. I use torrents mostly for TV shows I miss and it bothers me to see the onslaught of assault on Internet freedom and privacy.

There are a lot of groups supporting free internet and trying to wake more people up to the cause. If the public remains relatively silent on the issue, the Internet will be taken over by corporations and governments and eventually we'll be losing this and that unless we pay more of course.

One strategy calls for dozens of new torrent sites to arise for every one taken down so that instead of a few main sites there will be plenty to fall back on making Bit-Torrent an unstoppable protocol on the net.

This thing with France is a little more tricky. This reminds me of the strict Internet monitoring that the Chinese are subjected to.

Well, in most of these countries, the government is elected by the people so unless the people speak up louder, kiss the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet goodbye....

I'm not saying we should have all out piracy, but this is just my thoughts on these sorts of issues.

[kayhanbakid]

Major attack on torrent sites lately. Its a shame. I use torrents mostly for TV shows I miss and it bothers me to see the onslaught of assault on Internet freedom and privacy.

There are a lot of groups supporting free internet and trying to wake more people up to the cause. If the public remains relatively silent on the issue, the Internet will be taken over by corporations and governments and eventually we'll be losing this and that unless we pay more of course.

One strategy calls for dozens of new torrent sites to arise for every one taken down so that instead of a few main sites there will be plenty to fall back on making Bit-Torrent an unstoppable protocol on the net.

This thing with France is a little more tricky. This reminds me of the strict Internet monitoring that the Chinese are subjected to.

Well, in most of these countries, the government is elected by the people so unless the people speak up louder, kiss the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet goodbye....

I'm not saying we should have all out piracy, but this is just my thoughts on these sorts of issues.

Good post.

[despoteuodia]

peer to peer transfer is not illegal. and i don't think france (or any other country for that matter) can differentiate between legal torrents (for example: linux [freeware] using p-2-p to save the server bandwidth) and illegal torrents (copyrighted material).

Fedora and debian definately use P-2-P for downloading the live CD and Install Cd's
its free, opensource, and completely legal. (even on p2p) cutting off internet for legally downloading non-copyrighted material (ie linux) from p2p would really agrivate me. This would have me fighting in court if i lived in france. I'm sure Fedora servers will not like the end of p2p, having to transfer gigs on its own... and it will be crap slow... *sigh*

and if you own a cd, and it gets destroyed by say a pet or younger brother, isnt it then legal to access copyrighted materials that you already paid for? like having a back up copy, cept as an aferthought of the destruction of the cd?

[kjetil1991]

i dont think they are going to stop any way just more strugle doing it

[Demibeard]

Hmm, piracy must be huge in France, I really hope this kind of narrow mindedness doesn't migrate across the channel.

Thing is that all this does is line the pockets of 'Dodgy market traders' It won't stop piracy, not the sort that's linked to organised crime etc.

I guess it's all about hitting the soft targets again.

[Christuserloeser]

Sad to hear that, because France introduced a law not too long ago (about two or three years ago) that basically allowed file sharing IIRC. At the very least it wasn't possible for the authorities to punish anyone caught sharing copyrighted music.

With the new government that apparently changed...

[Murdock]

i don't think france (or any other country for that matter) can differentiate between legal torrents (for example: linux [freeware] using p-2-p to save the server bandwidth) and illegal torrents (copyrighted material).

Here u are totally wrong! As long as your filesharing application does not use encryption, they can easyily see what you download, IF your provider allows them to, by just monitoring your downstream ... they just make an exact copy of what you download. But in order to do this, they first of all have to notice that u are downloading illegal content.

1. I do not know what counts as illegal in france ... your downloading of TV shows might be illegal according to their laws ... as far as I know it is not in Germany ... but have no idea about France ...

2. They may notice you if they log the IPs you are surfing to ... e.g. the sides hosting torrent files have always the same IPs (of course) .. so they might scan the logs for such IPs ... once they noticed u are downloading such *.torrent files, they can track ur traffic ... then they got u ...

3. just don't use this crappy torrent $#@! ... or only for LEGAL files (= files which are legal to be downloaded in your country) ... use p2p apps which use up-/downstream encryption. Then they cannot do anything to u ... they see u d/l'ing the tracker files (they are called like that, right?), but they can not monitor your traffic ... at least only that part which is not crypted ...

4. the governments will NEVER be able to entirely shut down piracy .. the only thing they can do is trying to scare you so u download less. They've never thorwn s/o into jail for leeching copyright protected content in Europe as far as I know ... u know how much work there would be for the courts? LOL just unbearable for them ...