France's Creation and Internet Law
04/02/2009Although the Internet has had an enormous impact on many aspects of our lives and culture, the music industry has suffered as a result. CD sales are reportedly half what they were five years ago. To combat the proliferation of illegal downloading of copyrighted material, France is considering a new law that would establish a "three strikes and you're out [of the Web]" policy, with an initial email warning after the first infraction, a second warning via the postal service, and no Internet for one year for people who continue to illegally download copyrighted content after the second warning. The law, called the Creation and Internet law (loi Création et Internet), would be enforced by Hadopi (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet), an administrative authority set up especially for this legislation to collect information about individuals who choose to download copyrighted material from their ISPs (at the request of the party holding the rights to the material). However, many users and webmasters are not so excited about the idea, and have instituted a blackout protest in response.
The music industry was one of the first sectors to notice a significant change in business due to the growth in popularity of the Internet, where instead of dropping $14 on a CD, a user can download an entire album for free in just minutes. This [then] newfound capability to obtain copyrighted material gratis and share it with your friends tore the music industry in two. In the United States and around the world, such artists as Nine Inch Nails and U2's Bono have protested illegal downloading, but other artists and groups like Kid Rock, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason have expressed the opposite, encouraging people to download their music as much as they want, because the record labels make money off album sales, not the artists. One hundred and forty musicians, including O'Brien and Mason, along with Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox, and others have formed the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) to persuade lawmakers to leave people who download music alone. After all, music is art and art ought to be shared and enjoyed by all, right?
Thousands of websites show black pages with white text the reads: " APPEL HADOPI: black-out du Net français." The "Black-out" protest was organized by La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net), a French Internet civil liberties group, with support from the Open Society Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Although it is unknown exactly how many sites are participating in the blackout, la Quadrature du Net estimates the figure to be over 12,000 for unique domains and over 500,000 for URLs. Opponents of the Creation and Internet law have also blacked out their Facebook profiles and Twitter avatars, and according to la Quadrature du Net, an entire island in Second Life (a virtual online world) will go black on Saturday.
The prospect of losing your Internet connection because you wanted to listen to music is seen as preposterous and unfair by many. Today, the Internet serves as more than simply a tool to gather information. It is also used as a primary vehicle of communication and social activity. It is used to share thoughts, creations of all types, and for shopping in stores halfway around the world. It also entertains, with music, movies, television, and other media available at the click of a button. To take away all of those aspects of a person's (let's call him Phil) life would be like sending him back in time to the early to mid 90s, which doesn't sound too bad, until you consider the fact that everyone else would be Twittering about Phil's mysterious disappearance from their virtual lives.
The Internet has become an important facet in our lives, our communities, and our world. Taking away a person's rights to the Internet and all the data it contains would be a travesty, but the law is the law, and copyright laws apply to the Web. Many French " internautes" (Web surfers) say that if the Creation and Internet law passes in the lower house, they will find a way around it and continue to download music as they do today. It will be interesting to see some of the discussion that will come out of this, i.e. the parallels between rights to the Internet and civil liberties. As of Tuesday, the Internet and Creation law has been rewritten, fixing only some of the numerous issues that led to the blackout.
