France: Suspension of Internet access to tackle piracy?
01 January 2008
A report commissioned by the French culture ministry in September to detail the findings of a "mission on combating illegal downloading and for the development of legal offers of musical, audiovisual and film works" was submitted to the government on 23 November 2007. It proposes protecting authorship rights through the setting up of an independent administrative authority with powers to cut off Internet access and suspend subscriptions to Internet service providers' (ISPs) services for repeat offenders, if they illegally download music or images.
Forty companies and associations active in the publishing and film artists' and production sector, as well as major ISPs active in France, signed up to the Olivennes report (named after Denis Olivennes, its author and president/managing director of French book and music department store giant Fnac). It is described by its author as a system that is "dissuasive rather than repressive", in response to the widespread practice of the downloading of material subject to authorship rights. He describes France as the "paradise of piracy" which, if it is allowed to develop, will "threaten cultural diversity in the world and in our country". Culture Minister Christine Albanel welcomed the report and envisaged the submission of a legislative proposal in the first quarter of 2008, and its adoption before the summer, while "simultaneously" preparing "implementation decrees" in order "to move quickly", something that begs the question of how much importance is given to parliamentary scrutiny of the measure.
By tackling people making private copies of copyright protected material, the new law would supplement the 2006 law on authorship rights and related rights in the information society, which introduced an offence entailing prison sentences of up to five years and fines of up to Euro 300,000, applicable to large-scale Internet fraud involving the transmission of "thousands" of films and songs for commercial purposes. The consumer association UFC -
Que choisir described the plans as a "repressive escalation", and the rescinding of service subscriptions as contravening the presumption of innocence and the European Convention on Human Rights, while socialist MPs Christian Paul and Patrick Bloche expressed their concern for "the temptation of permanent surveillance of the Net, independently of any crime or judicial procedure". There was also opposition from Sarkozy's own UMP party, two of whose MPs (Marc le Fur and Alain Huguenot) opposed the creation of an independent authority to punish Internet users who download material, talking of a "veritable special jurisdiction".
To "discourage" and make this activity "expensive and complicated", the report envisages a three-stage process. The first would consist in the issuing of two warnings to dissuade offenders from downloading material illegally. Subsequently, if users fail to heed the warnings, the temporary suspension of their Internet subscription would cut them off from the Internet for between 10 and fifteen days. Finally, they would have their contract rescinded and be "blacklisted" in a database of people who are forbidden from using Internet for an unspecified period that may be set at around a year, according to
Le Monde newspaper. A newly-established independent administrative authority would be responsible for issuing warnings and adopting sanctions, and it would be headed by a judge, "so as to guarantee personal rights and freedoms". This approach received the backing of ISPs, as it would recognise their "role as mere carriers", with the adoption of sanctions governed by a judicial authority, and gives them two years to develop filtering systems capable of recognising operations that violate authorship rights. ISPs would have a role in informing the authority of suspected offences after being alerted by copyright holders, and the authority would have powers to sanction ISPs for failing to carry out its inst