France passes controversial anti-piracy bill
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 3:42 PM ET
CBC News
The French National Assembly in Paris is shown Tuesday during the vote on a law that creates a government agency to track and punish those who pirate music and film on the internet and cut off the internet connections of people who make illegal downloads. (Christophe Ena/Associated Press)France on Tuesday passed legislation that would allow internet service providers to cut the internet connections of customers who download or upload copyright-protected music and video files illegally after "three strikes."
The legislation, which failed to pass in an earlier vote in the country's lower house in April, was approved on Tuesday in the government's second attempt, with 296 votes for and 233 against.
The earlier defeat, by a vote of 21-15, came on a day when few legislators showed up to finalize the measure.
The bill was hotly contested, as critics said it would encroach on personal freedoms and be difficult to enforce while the music and film industry had pushed for tougher laws to combat online piracy.
It also crossed party lines, as members of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's own party voted against it at the same time as some opposition party members voted for it.
The legislation must still be passed by the Senate and faces a review from the country's Constitutional Council. It also faces potential legal challenges as the European Union passed a measure last week prohibiting EU governments from cutting off a user's internet connection without court approval.
Music, film and publishing industry groups have been urging countries around the world to adopt more stringent copyright rules, with varying degrees of success.
Many countries mulling copyright reform
In March, New Zealand pulled back from enacting similar legislation over concerns from both the government and privacy advocates, and in January, the United Kingdom's intellectual property minister David Lammy told the Times newspaper his government had dropped a similar three-strikes approach as it crafts its own copyright legislation.
Canada is also working on new legislation and is negotiating an international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement with a group of countries that include New Zealand, the European Union, the U.S. and other nations around the world.
Canada's minority Conservative government indicated as part of its election platform that it plans to reintroduce copyright reform to replace Bill C-61, a copyright reform bill introduced last spring that died when the election was called in the fall.
That bill did not include a three-strikes rule but did have other measures some viewed as more restrictive. For example, while the New Zealand act allows librarians to circumvent some digital locks on behalf of consumers, the Canadian bill proposed banning the breaking of digital locks altogether.
