Heather

A little more of the political side of technology for those interested:

A week old now - but still an interesting story. France broke with the EU last week and pushed through some very interesting legislation - essentially on your 3rd strike you could lose internet connection for up to one year - loss of internet is so contentious, this law may not last long.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10238912-93.html
Anyone from France in particular care to comment?


But who knows....it looks like the UK may be going this route soon as well:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/...cle6275564.ece

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soundman98

hmm. europeans and their laws.. (I'm from the usa, btw) I see no mention of how this law works-- so if your were to do all of this at a internet cafe, would/could they track/disable the mac address, or would the cafe get the warning or be disabled?

colin

I dont think they'd disable my MAC address, you could just use a different router and be back in business. They'd disable by your name and your address. Your whole house would be unallowed to sign up for any ISP, and if you moved, your name would be banned so that you couldn't sign up in your new house either until your ban was finished. Meaning if you did this at an internet cafe, it would be hilarious

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Heather

Financial times had a good few articles on this - the coffee house/internet cafe was cited as a challenge - but presumably "they" have done the numbers and this is an insignificant source of copyright file sharing...

Or maybe not - there was some talk about Sarkozy's wife (sort of a singer) being an advocate of this. No matter - the question is, does everyone have the right to internet no matter what?

DarquePervert

If you're paying for a service, you have the right to use that service.
If you misuse/abuse the service, the provider has the right to bar you from their service.
If you use the service for illegal means, the provider has the right to prosecute, as well as anyone that may have been harmed, i.e. the artists whose work you stole.

Internet access is not a right, but a service, aleing one that is more and more important to every day life. But you screw it up, and you don't get none.

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bmw_car_pc

so you take your laptop or what have you and move to a different WIFI hotspot, or change your mac address lol its not hard. My apartment complex has wifi over the whole thing and I was updating my site and i guess using to much bandwidth so they blocked me, I just changed my MAC address and I was on within 5 mins again.

csfile

I was thinking the same thing...could be tough to enforce

Crinos

Then what about iPhone plans... Most of the plans have some amount, or even free Mb per month... Will the ISPs go to the T(elecom)SPs and say.., "hey... Mr. Crinos is on our ban list, so you need to ban him from your network".

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eigenVector

... oops, I mean:

This one will get costly to enforce. Everybody needs to make sure they secure their own wireless connections. Wireless hot spots will need to make precautions to prevent these actions, because they will be held liable. But this shouldn't be anything new.

Crinos

I think this is more a law to scare ppl with. As noted... It will be realy hard to enforce.

Situation:
My noob neighbour sets up a unsecure WiFi
I use it, and download stuff from it.
Every time I download, I erase the logs on his unprotected routere where the user and password is still the same as out of the box default.
My neighbour gets the blame for a crime that he did not commit....

Or? Do the french want the fact that one is unable to secure a WiFi to be a crime in it self?

As noted... I think this law is just to intimidate noobish parents and perhaps some kids... That's all.

eigenVector

If the french are anything like us in the US, one who leaves a wifi unsecure will be praised for not knowing. The government likes to blame the ignorance of the masses on the manufacturer's here. So they will probably make the router manufacturer's liable.

Then again, maybe I've just been reading too much Ayn Rand... ah well...

kraft

I'm in France, they are voting funny things which are few hours later denied by european laws...Finally those kind of laws are simply showing how politics are corrupted and how they are eating from huge companies hands. If some were having doubt about this or if it was not clear, now i guess they only can admit the stinky side of things.
Everything is turning around one thing. Money and nothing else but money.
All the politic things are illusions that only retards can still believe.

What they plan with this is probably to try to get back some escaped customers...but if one has no money to buy many dvd or many music cd, this person usually downloading illegal stuff won't buy anyway.
I think more that people are now seeing music as softwares or non material things, they find that downloading is something free and that if something is downloadable then it's free or as is.
Thoughts have evolved.
Some big companies helped undercover, piracy during may many years until they touched their goal, getting present on the whole earth everywhere.
People took habit to download in despite of any law, this was a spreading policy.
It's so easy to download and no matter how many people will be harmed by doing so are they really harmed ?
Music, Movies, Software, everything that is not material is suffering from the same.

No one would have the idea to pick things in supermarket and leave without paying apart non honest people.
Who would find normal to enter in Lamborghini's garage or Ferrari's garage, sit in the car, turn the key and wave goodbye to the seller without having paid the car ?
It can be extended to banks or whatever example you may find.

Now companies are discovering that they trained a bit too much this army of "good" customers with the spreading policy...
unfortunately i don't think thay any law will change something.
It will simply move things to another way of downloading or sharing music, movies, softwares.
This is silly as saying that a law will say that everyone must run linux in his box.
There is one big virus which is from too long time in the boxes to be erased by a law, same thing applies with illegal downloads habits.

2k1Toaster

Just so you know it is the same here is the US... Comcast and Time Warner started doing this a couple years back. They stopped just sending out letters. They now have the right to limit your bandwidth if it is gross or suspicious and is 100% control on their side. If you have too many connections open, or too many suspicious data transfers, or just too many transfers for a sustained period (again their sole discretion), they will ban you from their ISP. You would then have to sign up with someone else.

Now to the majority of people in the US that do not live in megatropolises, there is but only 1 high speed internet provider. So essentially that is banning you from wired high speed internet.

The way their policy is now, they do not need proof of any kind. It is however they feel about the situation and they answer to nobody.

They tried it out in 3 cities in the US a couple years ago. It was a "great success" (meaning the cut their costs greatly by banning people who were using a ton of bandwidth), so they have expanded it to as far as I know their whole network.

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kraft

This is looking like n... policy they are applying, not to protect their goods which is understandable but those policies running out of control are a bit like a stinky cheese.
I think the best is yet to come. I'm not sure that they (majors) will recover funds.

I do not agree in no way stealing music, video, software by illegal downloads but in other hand may they should open widely eyes and attempt to think or forecast what gains will be and what they expect. One that downloaded during years won't suddenly become a kind paying customer and change habits.This is childish or too schematic to not say primitive strategy. As mentionned above, find out a wifi hot spot and make some innocents to be punished with no reason apart their ignorance.
This is really unfair.

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