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Paul Sweeting

Paul Sweeting is the editor of ContentAgenda.com and a columnist for Video Business. He has covered the home entertainment industries since 1985 for Billboard, Variety, Publishers Weekly and other leading business publications. He is based in Washington, DC.


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Paul Sweeting

Paul Sweeting, Editor
ContentAgenda

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European disunion: Fighting piracy the French way - January 29, 2008

The rousing debate at Midem over the proper role of ISPs in protecting copyrights online gets more complicated seemingly by the hour. Just days after the head of IFPI, the international association of music trade associations, praised the work of France's "Mission Olivennes," as well as French president Nicolas Sarkozy's commitment to enlisting ISPs in policing their networks, France's music trade association blasted the French proposal for not going far enough.

At least Media Wonk thinks that's what happened. According to this auto-translated version of a VNUNet France story, the French trade association SNEP (Syndicat national des éditeurs de phonograms) is demanding that ISPs be required to establish an automated system for collecting the IP addresses of copyright infringers and furnishing them to ARMT, the agency created last year to regulate the use of technical protection measures (i.e. DRM). SNEP also wants ISPs to be required to cut off access to repeat offenders and is demanding penalties against ISPs that don't comply.

None of those provisions is in the legislation proposed by the French government and unveiled at Midem by Jean Berbinau, secretary general of ARMT. The bill would essentially codify the recommendations of the Olivennes Commission, created last year by the Sarkozy government to develop new approaches to addressing digital piracy. The commission's recommendations, which the ISPs signed off on, call for a voluntary system of cooperation between ISPs and content owners to identify illegal downloaders, send them email warnings, and if necessary cut off Internet access for repeat offenders. 

But neither the recommendations of the commission nor the proposed legislation would impose a legal obligation on ISPs themselves to actively monitor their subscribers' activities and report them to a government agency.

Things got even more complicated Tuesday when the European Court of Justice handed down a ruling in Spanish case declaring that EU law does not require ISPs to turn over the names and IP addresses of suspected copyright infringers. The court upheld Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to hand over information that would identify who had used peer-to-peer file-sharing tool KaZaA to distribute copyrighted material owned by Promusicae, a Spanish nonprofit group of film and music producers.

The court added, however, that individual EU countries are free to pass national laws requiring ISPs to turn over such data, so long as it does not "affect the requirements of protecting personal data."

How countries are supposed reconcile those two factors Media Wonk can hardly imagine. Ditto its implications for the French legislation, the reccomendations of the Olivennes Commission, SNEP's demands, the role of ISPs in policing their networks and the price of tea in China.



[Content Protection & Management]  [Digital Copyright]  [DRM]  [Regulation & Legislation]  [Streams & Downloads]   LEAVE A COMMENT
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