French Socialists mount constitutional challenge to 'three strikes' net access bill
This week in As The HADOPI Turns: Socialists! Frenchmen suing France! An estimate of takedown numbers that'll make you glad Christine Albanel isn't doling our your online time! Plus, evidence that it really can get worse. Très worse.
When last we saw France's Création et Internet law, which gives ISPs there the power to block access to the Internet for anyone accused three times of illegal file-sharing, it was on its way to the Senate and onward to the desk of President Nicolas Sarkozy. On Tuesday, several Socialist members of the French Parliament took their case to the nation's Constitutional Council, raising eleven points of possible conflict with the country's laws.
Issues raised by the filing include the law's presumption of guilt, the lack of a means by which the accusations can be addressed by the accused, the lack of proportion between the punishment and the crime, and a provision (previously a topic of heated Assembly debate) forcing those who have had their access taken away to continue paying their ISPs for it. Response from the court is expected in about a month.
Meanwhile, United Press International reported earlier this week that French European Parliament member Guy Bono says that if the Constitutional Council doesn't address the problems, he'll take it to the EU. Speaking to the EU Observer, MP Bono said, "If a French constitutional judge does not react [to requests for action], I will ask the European Commission to request the European Court of Justice launch infringement proceedings against the French government for not respecting community law."
Other MPs raise other questions. One MP involved with the constitutional appeal, Martine Billard, says on her blog that it's her understanding that HADOPI also circumvents that whole equality-and-fraternity thing. According to testimony during one reading of the bill, one witness stated that some members of the professional classes -- doctors, lawyers, notaries, and so forth -- might not have their net access cut off so quickly as would accused people in other professions.
Christine Albanel, the minister of culture and driving force behind HADOPI, is alleged by Billard in the same post to have said that the goal of HADOPI was to "create fear" in the hearts of would-be downloaders. Elsewhere, Albanel has recently been quoted by the Associated Press as saying she expects a thousand net-access shutdowns per day when the system is under full steam.
Think it couldn't get worse? Don't be so sure. An article in Le Monde on Monday introduces the prospect of LOPPSI. LOPPSI is an acronym for a French phrase translating to "law and planning for the performance of Homeland Security."
LOPPSI essentially legalizes government use of spyware (cookies, trojans, keyloggers, etc.) by law enforcement with only light and occasional judicial review. The bill would also provide for a program called "Pericles" that would acquire, correlate and track data on individual citizens ranging from judicial records to information about the SIMMs in their mobile phones.