The Dummies Guide to Hadopi
July 28, 2009 1:01 pm francaisA French cartoonist has explained the effect of the proposed Hadopi 2 law in France:
The dummies guide to Hadopi
Translation:
A law to protect authors
- Suppose you didn’t close the door to your apartment properly.
- Hey! It’s open! We didn’t pull it shut properly?
- And a neighbour came in and stole your DVD collection
- My God! My Harry Potter collection! And all of my Disney collection! Gone!
- He left my three Ozu films… that’s weird. A thief who doesn’t like the Japanese?
- This seriously hurts all the authors of these films
- Do you realise, the thief will be able to watch Snow White without paying! This will ruin Disney!
- You are guilty of “a serious breach of the obligation to monitor access to your multimedia equipment”
- I didn’t know! I thought that Harry Potter protected his DVDs with a magic spell. And that the Hulk beat up thieves with his super powers.
- As punishment, you are thrown out of your apartment for 3 months! (And not just the guilty party, the whole family, even the pet cat)
- I can’t even watch my Ozu any more
- That’s not the worst of it
- lil’cat! Eat this rat, he’s keeping me from sleeping!
- Yeah, right…
- And you’re lucky that we don’t set fire to your apartment
- If it was a house, I’d think about it. But in a 10 story apartment block, we have to wait until everyone is guilty! It takes a little longer.
For some background for non-French people: Hadopi is a law which says that if anyone downloads copyrighted material illegally over your internet connection, your internet access can be cut off for up to 3 months. I believe that you get 2 warnings before it gets cut off, but that the decision is made by an “independent” commission, and not by a judge, so you don’t have any recourse to appeal. The first version of the law was struck down by the French constitutional court, and the law is back with a second wind now.
The goal of protecting copyright holders is not a bad thing. I even mostly approve of the goal – it’s the rule of law by which free software lives and dies. But this is a bad law, badly drafted, and like “security” in airports will have far wider ranging collateral damage than the government realises.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Little precision, in the first version of the law, the administrative commission was indeed allowed to take the decision of cutting your internet access, which was rejected by the constitutional court. The second version of the law give that to the judge court which usually deal with fines, where you still haven’t the possibility to defend yourself… A “nice” way to by-pass a ruling of the constitutional court…