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Digital
Trois-strikes begins, while Europe could put more pressure on ISPs to act over piracy
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 23 September 2010
According to reports, three-strikes is go, go, go in France, with strike one ready to be unleashed against the first batch of web-users suspected of illegally file-sharing.
Music Ally cite French website PC INpact as saying that lists of IP addresses of suspected file-sharers have now been sent out to ISPs. The customers using those IP addresses will now be sent letters via France’s anti-piracy Hadopi office, warning them that if they don’t stop accessing music from illegal services they risk losing their net connection.
It’s not clear how many IP addresses will be targeted at launch, though PC INpact suggests tens of thousands at the outset, quickly moving up to hundreds of thousands. Though one would think that, for political reasons, only the most prolific file-sharers would be actually sent the three-strikes letters at the start. We’ll keep our ear to the ground for more updates on the activation of Europe’s first three-strikes system for tackling internet piracy.
Meanwhile, a French MEP is pushing for the European Commission to look into ways to make internet service providers play a more proactive role in policing piracy across Europe. Marielle Galle’s snappily titled paper, ‘The Report On The Enforcement Of Intellectual Property In The Internal Market’, just endorsed by the European Parliament, calls for the EC to pressure ISPs to work with content owners to find “appropriate solutions” for piracy problems, with the threat of new Europe-wide IP laws if they fail.
European Commission officials have generally played down past suggestions that three-strikes will be forced onto EU countries, either through European legislation or the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, in which the EU is negotiating for all its members. And there have been moves (albeit unsuccessfully) by some in the European Parliament to introduce legislation to thwart national efforts to introduce any anti-piracy systems that include net-disconnection as a deterrent. But Galle’s paper could result in ISPs getting at least informal pressure from European political types to step up their anti-piracy efforts.
The paper isn’t entirely one-sided. As with most political papers on tougher net piracy rules, it calls for the content industries to make more compelling legal services available, and also returns to an old favourite of the European political community, a call for the music industry to better license content across borders, making it easier for digital companies to provide pan-European services.
