What You Should Know About the French Anti-Downloading Pact
Have you ever downloaded materials from P2P (Peer-to-Peer) networks? Maybe you’ve been downloading music, or movies, or documents. Maybe you’ve downloaded works in the public domain, maybe some still under copyright.
If you’re in France, and you’ve been caught 3 times, then it’s three strikes and you’re out.
And when we say out we mean out. You’re losing your internet access.
The background behind the Anti-P2P movement in France
The French Government, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in France, and the local film and music industry has gotten together and drafted up this pact in order to punish ordinary users of the internet like you and me from downloading on P2P networks.
What are P2P networks?
Peer-to-peer file sharing is when people on the internet make files available to be downloaded over the internet. Examples of software programs that let you do this are Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella (like Limewire), and Bittorrent (like Azureus and uTorrent). Let’s say you recorded a school play on a video camcorder. You make a video file (let’s say .avi) and you put this up on YouTube and you also put it up on a P2P network. This means you can share this with others – but in France this could be grounds for you getting dropped from getting access to the world wide web.
How the French punishment system will work
If you’re a P2P user in France, you’ll get the three strikes and you’re out policy like we mentioned. The way this works is that when you are caught downloading what they presume to be illegal content, you will get a warning for that specific illegal download. These warnings will be held in their records. For all intents and purposes, after 3 total downloading infringements, you will lose your internet service.
The cancellation of your internet service follows a procedure. First your internet account is suspended. Then an independent authority, who will be supervised by a judge, will then decide your internet fate.
“We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture…The Internet must not become a high-tech Far West, a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs.†said French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is definitely behind this move and firmly supports the initiative of the French government and corporate agencies that support this pact. John Kennedy, who is head of the IFPI, said about this pact that “this is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far..President Sarkozy has shown leadership and vision. He has recognized the importance that the creative industries play in contemporary western economies.â€
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in new zealand i wnat to get Doctor who as it come out in the UK but ill be waiting for up to six months before it comes out!!!