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Unmitigated Gaul - November 26, 2007

Since his election in July, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has conducted a one-man campaign to repair frayed Franco-American relations, from vacationing here in August to paying a formal visit to the White House, leaving many U.S. political observers hopeful that France's seemingly reflexive anti-Americanism was reflective more of Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, than of fundamental differences between the countries.

But just when you're ready to restore "French" fries to American menus, Sarkozy says something so thoroughly and incorrigibly French that it reminds you why the two countries often find the other so confounding in the first place.

"This is a decisive moment," Sarkozy said Friday in announcing his government's proposal to cut off Web access to illegal downloaders, "for the future of a civilized Internet."

The Internet, he added, "must not become a high-tech Far West, a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity."

I can almost hear Bonaparte's armies mustering to the cause: The Internet must be "civilized," and it is the mission of France to civilize it. Otherwise, the World Wide Web will be nothing but an American-style lawless frontier beset by pillagers bent on the "destruction of culture."

The fact that the U.S. copyright industries are likely to praise the French proposal tells you more about how far our modern corporate economy has come from its entrepreneurial roots than it does about Franco-American rapprochement.

That's not an endorsement of piracy. Merely an observation that bringing "civilization" to the Internet is a long way from celebrating the "creative destruction," of American-style capitalism.




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