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   Home » EDRi-gram newsletter - Number 10.16, 29 August 2012

The French government wants to reinforce Internet control

   29 August, 2012
   »
   Intellectual Property Enforcement

   On 21 August 2012, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault asked three
   ministers to work on relating CSA (the Superior Council of the
   Audiovisual) and Arcep (Telecommunications and Post regulator) asking
   them to coordinate their work with that of Pierre Lescure on Hadopi
   future.

   The request made by the prime minister is obviously intended to take
   Internet regulatory powers from Hadopi and give them to CSA. This is a
   real concern having in view CSA’s intentions to filter content and give
   up net neutrality. EDRi-observer La Quadrature du Net draws the
   attention over the threat of reducing the Internet to an audio-visual
   service in order to impose on it administrative regulations that can
   lead to censorship.

   “The ‘regulation of the content’ by a centralised actor is an approach
   doomed to failure: Internet is not an ‘audiovisual service’, the
   ‘contents’ are produced by commercial companies as well as by
   individuals. Publishing content on the Internet represents freedom of
   expression and a democratic participation of everybody. To impose
   Internet to be regulated in the same way as television is one more step
   towards an administrative control of the network and towards censorship
   of communications”, said Jérémie Zimmermann of La Quadrature du Net.

   Although Hadopi has been greatly opposed and criticised, the
   perspective of having CSA in charge with Internet regulation is even
   more frightening.

   In the meantime, Hadopi has in mind a follow-up of the graduate
   response and fights the proposals, from Sacem or SNEP for instance,
   that ask for milder sanctions for users found to illegally share online
   copyrighted material. Presently the sanction is the suspension of the
   Internet access and a 1500 Euro fine. Yet, although Hadopi has sent a
   large amount of warning letters to Internet users, no court has yet
   applied any such sanction having in view the disproportional sanction
   and the difficulty of proving the infringement. The proposals ask for
   milder but firmer sanctions that can be clearly applied. Sacem’s
   proposal is even to go to an automatic fine system calculated on route
   radars. Mireille Imbert-Quaretta, President of the Commission for the
   Protection of Hadopi rights, warns over the possibility of actually
   obtaining a more repressive system. “I also share the view that
   contravention fines would be even more repressive than the graduate
   response: the risk of automatizing the process, the possibility of
   accumulating fines, the impossibility of appealing to suspended
   sentences, the lack of knowledge of the public related to the fact that
   P2P software share content and that this sharing makes the object of
   infringements....”

   So, it could be even worse than with Hadopi.

   It’s official: Matignon associates Hadopi, CSA and Arcep to regulate
   the Internet! (only in French, 21.08.2012)
   http://www.numerama.com/magazine/23465-c-est-officiel-matignon-associe.
   ..

   Arcep – CSA link: is the government on the way to Internet censorship?
   (only in French, 22.08.2012)
   http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/rapprochement-arcep-csa-le-gouvernement.
   ..

   Hadopi thinks of a “follow-up of the graduate response” without fines
   (only in French, 24.08.2012)
   http://www.numerama.com/magazine/23496-la-hadopi-reflechit-a-une-suite.
   ..
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