The European Parliament has voted in favour of a new pan-European rule which could, in theory, bring an end to ambitions to introduce a simplistic three-strike system in any EU country. This, of course, could impact most on France who are in the process of voting three-strike through.
MEPs this week passed new proposals for EU-wide regulations governing internet usage, which included the previously reported amendment which says that internet service providers cannot be forced to cut off a customer's net access on copyright infringement (or any other) grounds without a court ruling to that effect.
In many ways the point of the three-strike system, whereby persistent copyright infringers would lose their net access if they failed to heed two official warnings, is that such action can be taken without expensive and time consuming court action. Although, in theory, the threat of disconnection in addition to damages payments if successfully sued for infringement through the courts might be a bigger deterrent to those file-sharing unlicensed content than just nominal damages alone, what the music business want is a quicker, cleaner system, and one which preferably does not involve them being seen to sue their own customers.
The French system would put the power of disconnection into the hands of a government agency, who would consider copyright claims by content owners and instruct ISPs to cut off those believed to be illegally file-sharing despite receiving written warnings. Some, though, are concerned that such a system, without a formal judicial process, will be open to misuse, or at least subject to carelessness, which could lead to innocent parties losing their net access without a formal opportunity to defend themselves. Similar concerns in New Zealand, where three-strikes was made law without even a government agency in place to administer it, led to the new system being shelved completely for the time being.
The provision to stop internet disconnections without a court hearing was in the original draft of EU internet usage regulations, but were edited out by the European Council, which has representatives of national governments in it. But MEP Guy Bono proposed it be re-included, boasting, when his fellow MEPs approved his proposal, that he had put an end to any ambitions for the three-strike system to be introduced within the Union. The amended proposal was formally passed on Wednesday by 407 in favour to 57 against. The proposals will now work their way through the rest of the European legislative process, and could has yet hit other hurdles.
Even if they do successfully become European law, though, the French government has said it doesn't believe they would conflict with its plans to introduce the three-strike rule which, as previously reported, are currently being voted on by the French parliament. Quite how they believe that to be the case isn't clear - perhaps they plan to call the agency that administers the three-strike disconnections a court?