That's an interesting step. How do they work it though if the internet connection is shared? For example, in standard home the connection is shared by Dad, Mum and 2 kids. What if it's one of the kids downloading? Does the connection get cut for the whole family?

what if a next door neighbour was using your wireless router and was file sharing how would they be able to know that?

I think this policy is exactly whats needed!

Jon - Surely the connection of the whole family would be cut or to be more specific, the account holder's connection. If you have the account surely its your responsibility to ensure its being used legally.

AH - Likewise, surely you make sure your connection is secure or pay the penalty if you don't.

While this is a reasonable move, I think ISPs should be instructed to send out information to their users about how to secure wireless networks and to tell them that they will be held liable for anything anyone else does on a connection in their name.

As it is, you can't just roll this out and expect it to work. When UK ISPs trialled a scheme where pesistent filesharers were given three strikes, some people cut off were simply clueless old people who had neighbours theiving their WiFi. People like this need to be educated before you start penalising them.

I think this is the harsh approach and I'm concerned how much new law’s about policing the internet could spring up further down the line as a result of this one. I think there are other ways to solve the problem. Times are different now, and this seems like a really old fashioned way of solving the issue. Haven’t we learnt from the past that this attempt to stamp out the problem ends in tears?

I’m not trying to promote a solution because I haven’t got one to suggest, that I feel is any better. I’m sure there is another way which doesn’t involve making publishers and developers “the bad guys” as far as the public are concerned. I think they need to change the service that customers are paying for. Old argument, but I still have faith.

On the positive side it would solve the core problem for a while, but there are allot of things wrong with it.

what would happen if you ran ur browser using anon. proxies or if your wireless protection was hacked (which is made easily possible searching g**gle).
why dont the isps ban these files being downloaded in the first place and stop the crime being committed, instead of waiting until after and then setting down the law.

@3: Regardless of whose responsibility it is, you cannot punish on the basis of "you're the account holder, therefore it's your fault". That's like banning a car owner from driving if a family member commits 3 driving offences in it.

Remember, we're not specifically dealing with adults and children under 18 here. You tell me how an account holder in a household of say 3 people over 18, is going to accept the responsibilty for policing the other adults, especially if those adults contribute to the cost, students in shared accomodation for example. What if one of those people illegally download once each? The law states...

"...prosecution of anyone found to have downloaded copyrighted material on three separate occasions"

Nothing about the account holder. They will have to identify and target the individuals to rightfully prosecute. The argument "it's your internet connection, therefore you did it" will just fall apart in court when the defendant simply says "prove it was me".

Even if you've got a secure WiFi connection, how would they prove it wasn't hacked and someone else wasn't the one doing the downloading?

Consider any family with a DS, their security level is probably none, or WEP. Are you telling me that their choice of console makes them irresponsible, and therefore automatically liable for what happens on their internet connection because of it?

I can pretty much guarantee, the first test case for this scenario will go global... and I don't imagine it will end the way the French government will anticipate. You watch the first time a home based, internet business is shut down because little Johnny ignored daddy and hit the torrent sites 3 times. Just watch those lawsuits fly.

If I can already see loopholes in this looking at it from a developers perspective, imagine how many steps ahead the regular illegal downloaders are? All it will do is worry the casual/occasional downloader, which isn't the problem.

Responsibility of the account holder.

Paying monitoring software that has to be installed on the computer to discharge the owner of the fault. You have it and it tells you are clean, you are discharged ; you dont have it, how sad.

Based on ip address

Filtering and watermarking of copyrighted stuff.

Control of legal offer thru a portal that references the 'good' sites.

Mass monitoring of peer to peer networks. 10000 e-mails per day sent on the 1st strike, 3000 paper letters per day on the 2nd strike, and 1000 decisions of cutting down the line per day. People have calculated that a decision has to be done in 25 seconds if they want to do 1000 decisions per day.

Addition of sanctions. 3 strikes-out and also civil court for repairing damages still possible, as well as the counterfeiting charges that is up to 3 years jail and up to 300k euros fine

Up to 1 year of suspention. The account holder will be forced to pay even if he can't use his line.

All this decided by a body that will do the inquiry, launch the pursuit, and decide the sanction.

You can contest the suspention in a true court with a judge but the suspention may be still effective during the trial process.

It will be 'You will have to prove that you are innocent'. It won't be 'They have to prove you are guilty'.

All this is done against the ISPs that says that isnt feasible and too costly. The law will cost 100 millons euros per year and against the EU parliament that just voted by an overwhelming majority that Internet access is a fundamental right.

Doomed to fail. France physically borders other soveriegn nations, wi-fi doesn't see national boundaries. This is a legislative stunt timed to follow up on the debacle that was the TPB SpecTrial. It's singularly unenforceable, and ultimately will be seen as a cash sink for tax dollars.
Simply stand up, and under oath, declare it wasn't you who initiated the download, not that I'd promote perjury. If the legislators are going to attempt to regulate and dole out punitive measures against "illegal downloaders", they're going to have to first legislate what precisely "is" an illegal download, which, has still not been successfully accomplished. You can still name a file anything...which may actually place it into the realm of a "derivative artisitic work." Far too many loopholes, but, it gives us something to report about, lol.

I'm fairly sure that my ISPS T&Cs stated that it is my responsibility, as the account holder, to ensure that my connection to the internet is not used for nefarious deeds. This includes family members using my line and also ensuring my connection is secure (to a given degree).

I would be surprised if this law were to be used to shut a families connection to the internet down if little Johnny has been downloading suspect materials. Not that It cant or won't happen just that I think the law enforcers will do some investigation before proceeding and there should be some form of appeal??

Might prove to be interesting. How hard it will be to get this to work wel will see but it is a descent first step to stop huminaty from falling further into feelings that "all should be free for everybody" (and still call out not to be a comunist).

Things that are illegal should be taken action on, and French does just that. Claims like "but what if children are downloading" are JUST the right reasons to go on with it. You are responsible for your connection. And if your kids are steeling candy from the store you would be responsible as well, don't you? Also it might prove well in education and awareness over what is illegal and what not, since a lot of people even aren't aware anymore that downloads are not legal.

It is not that you are prosecuted as people state. it's your internet connection that will be shut down, nothing more as I understand?

It is however only part of the solution. Hitting hard on torrent sites is a nice one (but won't work I guess) but another solution might just be the providers killing traffic related to illegal filesharing, they surely should be able to make a start on that (making it irritating for users that will then abandon this use of free-time I guess).

I can't see this law surviving its first test case. I don't really sell games, but I saw this and just had to add my two cents.

I'll admit, I make an awful lot of my money a week from removing viruses from home computers. 95 times out of 100 it is because of Limewire; I can remove the program, clean up the viruses and tell the parents to tell the kids not to install it again.

I can guarantee you, within six months, I'll have seen at least 70 of those PCs again, all because the kids ignored the parents and re-installed Limewire.

On one occasion, a parent picked up the computer with her teenage son in the morning – I told both of them the problem had occurred because of Limewire and not to reinstall it. Yet, by the afternoon, the parent had brought the PC back, claiming I hadn't clean it properly. I had a look at the system files and found that within 45mins of the PC leaving my store, Limewire had been reinstalled and already used to download 3 albums.

That is why it will fail. You can't be held accountable for other people's – especially minor's – actions.

Also, I seem to remember reading that the EU voted earlier this week against any sort of banning of users for downloading software illegally. I imagine the EU will soon tell France to repeal it, if it hasn't already been defeated in a test case.

Hello

Maybe the solution would be to take a look at the mobile phone industry.

Each phone has a unique IMEI number and if that is blocked, the phone can never be used again on any network.

Perhaps, assign every PC CPU a unique IP address when it is manufactured, an IP address that cannot be changed later, and if that IP address is downloading illegally, block it, and render the PC useless to be used online, for anything.

Once people relaise they are forking out hundreds for new CPU's, they will realise it is just cheaper to buy the software legit (remember you are blocking a PC, not prosecuting a person, so this could work legally).

At the moment the current system of IP addresses is too 'wooly' to ever work.

Martin

"If caught downloading a third time, a user’s internet connection will be severed."

What a load of rubbish!

Changing service provider's, IP's, MAC Addresses and the name in which the ISP accounts were sent up with would allow you to carry on. Why doesn't the French government cut Google's connection to the internet as they host the majority of this stuff including all sorts of other malicious code that can harm people's PC's and not to mention scams that list as top hits that are used to fraud people out of millions of pounds!

@ Martin,

While it's a fair idea, in practice it wouldn't work. It's too easy to change components like the CPU.

Under french law you are guilty until YOU prove youself innocent. (Blunkett tried to make this adjustment to UK law, it got trashed by people with a brain thankfully.) The upshot is, all these "what if" arguments are irrelevant - the poor old punter will get terminated, and will have to fight to be reinstated.
(But theres no change there, as anyone who has dealt with Virgin media / orange / BT customer service will testify)

I would like to throw my to cents here.

Well people already outlined some views oh why this law will be very difficult both for ISPS and regular users like "problems with children or hacker access" and other alike problems.

So lets assume it works as intended and like some people metioned here because of "under 18" or networks with broad users base like student networks hundreds and thousands if not millions of IP addresses will be closed after 3 downloads. And if I understood law correctly that account owner will not be allowed under law to sign contract under other ISPS and get persona access again. So some universities and many home Internet connections will be closed down... We can argue that IP infringement hurts entertainment industry but with this law they just enforced the problem on everyone else... Firms with closed connection because of teenage worker... Homes with no access to most popular information channel now days... Universities without access to Internet... How all this is good for economy or even entertainment industry?

Now you can argue that both Universities and large firm owners should now make efforts on censoring Internet access to their students and employees? How financially in terms of time and resources hard is it? So it hurts the economy of education and business too...

Then if you go for home users... How can you actually determine what is copyrighted and what is not in the Internet? If I have watched video on youtube(and downloaded it along the way as from observer point of view watching and downloading is the same) will I receive infringement message? If I have listened to music on Internet radio station(and saved it to HDD along the way) will I be held responsible too? If friend from another country sent me MP3 over SkyPE or other direct way ad I antecedently hit "ok" instead of cancel will my Internet be shut down too?

What I am telling here is that think what Internet now will be? Internet is like food store. You come in a and buy something. Then when you leave a policeman stops you and tells you "hey you have heroin in there" but how could I knew that this content provider provides me with illegal goods? They do not write it on right?

So in the end it leads to "communism" but in another way which for shore is a lot worser then "information should be free to copy/provide/consume" which in some way does sound like communism. But communism had another side called supervision where people were afraid to go against official political view and organizations like KGB were taking people even when they were not responsible and it was someone who somehow set it up... With such laws as this same will happen to Internet. I as a regular user will be afraid of using it as there is no way to tell for me completly when and how I am infringe it or not as in Internet information is sent/copied/produced/consumed almost for free and there is no way for me to be shore that it is free documentary under CC license or copyrighted illegal thing...

So I don't see that it succeeds over all... It may succeed at lowering piracy but in other ways it is a very flawed way to fix it that will just kill the Internet as we knew it... It will just become an over-bureaucratized thing with no real way to tell what sites contain legal stuff and what do not as any organization certificates and ways of certificating sites seems to be possible to fake... Or you can hack a certificated site and put illegal stuff there? What then?

do the industry's ever think that what needs to change to prevent piracy is nothing to do with the amount of people downloading. but asking them the reason why they are downloading.

for example. i pay for sky TV. so is it wrong of me to download an episode of a TV program via a file sharing program that is broadcast on the channels i receive anyways. no one had a problem when u recorded a movie from sky onto a VHS, or a DVD Recorder. yet when it comes to downloading it online its all ILLEGAL ILLEGAL! whats the difference?

then we get to the point that allot of people download TV Shows that will be shown on the channels that they pay for in 3 months time. is it wrong of them to watch the same shows just a few month earlier? i personally dont think so. there paying for sky, there money pays for the right to watch that show. wheres the harm in watching the show a little earlier.

i hate piracy. id prefer to have the nice box with the artwork and the pretty stuff that comes with games and blu rays.

but its all about money. its all its ever been about. what the idiots at hollywood and the game industry dont relise is that most of the "piracy" that happens is by the people who wouldn't go and see there film or play that game anyway. because the cant afford too. most the people i know who have an R4 cartridge are single mothers getting it for there kids so they can say to there friends i have that game.

look at cinemas. in the UK its £7 just for a ticket into the film. thats over $10, never mind the fact that they want to charge you another 7 - 10 £ for a drink and some popcorn. if your a single mother, thats near £40 before u even start. to them downloading or paying for a copy of somthing then popping to asda for some popcorn and a bottle of soft drink is the cheaper solution.

i feel for everyone who gets caught. and i hate everyone that will do it to make some money. making money from it is life in prison in my opinion. but the quickest way to reduce piracy is to make things cheaper not attempt to enforce a law thats pretty much un enforceable.. in my opinion.

this just silly ....if this and other countries start to follow, and if the article posted here (41% of all pc software is pirated ) is slightly true, all the isp companies will be in major trouble

Why won't ISP's cooperate willingly? During Watergate 'Deep Throat' said, "Follow the money!"
Who is making the most money from illegal downloads? Not the record labels, not the developers, not the studios, not the criminal end users (yes they are criminals!) not even the uploaders.............it's the ISPs. You want to illegally download more of someones hard crafted products ? Your bandwidth too small.....increase your subscription and pay the ISP more money!
The ISPs know they 'facilitate' illegal acts but the law is fuzzy and penalties derisory. The French have a history of fighting against physical counterfeit products and now have the courage to fight against the illegal digital products. We have stautory laws against handling stolen goods, the law is clear, no ambiguity and it's an absolute offence. The ISP is just like your friendly neighbourhood fence, handling someones rightful belongings and passing them on to someone who really knows it's stolen but hey what the hell you don't have to look the victim in the eye!
The difference is, the law is clear but only the French have the guts to make a stand and introduce laws against Internet Piracy.

@20: ISP's facilitate piracy no more than the motorways facilitate motor theft.
I bet if they dug up all the roads the car theft rate would fall dramatically.
Should the government be charged with handling stolen goods because they are being transported on the road network?

Sorry Baz, your argument does not hold water.