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< | HADOPI |
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> | HADOPI |
| | The French Hadopi law was created in 2009 as a way to control and regulate internet access.
France is the first country to have passed such a law. |
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> | This is a poor way to
open. You have not given the reader any idea to consider, or any
drama, or in general provided any reason to keep reading. The
beginning of an essay is the place at which the reader's interest
must be attracted. This won't do it.
Your second sentence is not literally correct: lots of countries have
passed laws controlling and regulating Internet access. You mean
that HADOPI was the first enactment in the peninsula of Northwest
Asia that refers to itself as Europe to specify that people might be
prevented from connecting to the Net after a certain number of
lightly-demonstrated infringements of certain US entertainment
company copyrights. That's true, but you need to explain why it is
important, and indeed why it is important enough to be the first
thing you say.
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| | This law creates a government agency, the Haute Authorité pour la Diffusion des Ľuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet (HADOPI), which is the authority in charge of the enforcement of the new mechanism. |
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< | How does it work? |
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> | How does it work? |
| | On receipt of a complaint from a copyright holder or representative, HADOPI may initiate a 'three-strike' procedure:
The first step is an e-mail sent to the IP address’ owner. This e-mail specifies the time at which the claim was filed, but neither the object of the claim nor the identity of the claimant.
If the same user commits a second offence during the following 6 months, a similar letter is sent by certified mail.
If, during the following year, the offence is repeated, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is required to suspend internet access to the offending internet user, for a period which can range from two months to one year. |
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< | I. Problems with the reliance on IP addresses |
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> | Problems with the reliance on IP addresses |
| | The procedure is based on records of IP addresses. As they amount to immaterial evidence, it is not enough to establish the criminal offense of forging. Therefore, the text proposes not to rely on the presumption of forging but on a new offense, that of "failure to secure ones’ connection". |
| | French law penalises the owner of an IP address without regard to whether this person is in fact the one who committed the offence. But we know that nowadays, it is relatively easy to modify an IP address or to use somebody else’ IP address without particular computing skills.
I believe that this law cannot be efficient because hiding an IP address is no longer the sole prerogative of IT experts. For example, it is possible to use relay servers located in other countries (or rent one for a low price) or to use software which makes connections anonymous and encrypts them. |
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This section spends a great deal of time showing that the law is
technically deficient when it is sufficient to say it is absurd.
Suppose that all people are required to lock their doors tight enough
that no one can break into their apartments, or else they are
criminally responsible for anything done in their apartment by anyone
who breaks in. Will the courts enforce such an insanity according to
its literal meaning? Whether it is destroyed outright or merely
twisted into nonexistence is a detail. Everyone understands now, as
everyone understood then, that this is a profoundly cynical, corrupt
bluff on all sides. Industry forces pay politicians to provide them
with this outrage, in which the politicians pretend to be doing
everything the industry wants and the industry pretends to believe
them, and the fucking occurs as scheduled and then the whores are
paid. No one expects that this is going to work as advertised, but
the industry assumes that when all the dust settles they will have
gotten something, at least in terrorem that they would not have had
unless they paid the politicians to give them this legislation. The
politicians, for their part, know that most of what they have done is
going to perish along the way, but they don't believe young people
will turn out to punish them at the polls for their unbelievably
brazen willingness to give away the rights of Internet users to the
corrupt owners of media and "content," and right now, for letting
Hollywood fuck them and pretending to like it, they get paid
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| | Finally, this law can be criticized with regard to its potential impact on individual liberties.
HADOPI is merely an administrative entity, and relies on private agencies to carry out the technical aspects of enforcement. But how can we be sure that these private actors will not use the IP addresses for another purpose, or that HADOPI will not create a “black-box” of the downloaders? |
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< | II. Problems with the construction of the law itself |
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> | Problems with the construction of the law itself |
| | The major problem in the HADOPI law is that it has been enacted by people who did not know anything about computing.
This law focuses on very technical issues. It should not possible for people without any knowledge in the relevant field to create and pass a law which will have a huge impact not only on the future of internet computing, but also on individual liberties. |
| | As Balzac said in La Cousine Bette, “le travail constant est la loi de l’art comme celle de la vie” (continuous work is the law of art, as much as that of life). This expresses the idea that arts, and music in particular, will always exist because they are an essential part of our humanity. Laws and corporations which seek to restrict creation and diffusion will, in the end, always fail, as they cannot succeed in suppressing something so inherent to all societies. We can hope that governments and those who are meant to represent us come to recognize the truth of this, and give us our freedom back. |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Paper Title
-- By MarciaGivord - 20 Oct 2011
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B |
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> | But, as we can see, that
is not what happens. You can treat this issue, then, as one more
cost of the fundamental corruption of government in all the developed
democracies by the interests seen on the left as constituting
"Empire," the supranational order of ownership. Or you can say that
freeing the mind through the realization of the Network's
possibilities is the single step that will enable the overthrow of
Empire and its replacement by something closer to what we have always
struggled for and wanted. There are also many other, equally
interesting and productive, positions with respect to the recognition
that this is not what happens. What does not seem to be useful, to
me, is to end by pretending that what does not happen is what can
hope will spontaneously start happening. That conclusion is the one
conclusion that does not seem to me to be warranted by any available
evidence, and does not make good analytical use of whatever we have
managed to learn about the world. |
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |