France says au revoir to three strikes legislation

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Only last week the French Parliament passed a law similar to the controversial Section 92A that almost came to be in New Zealand. Like its ill-fated antipodean counterpart, the French law would have required internet service providers cut off internet access for repeat copyright infringers. With the law having been approved by a majority in the French parliament, it was thought to be a foregone conclusion that it would easily be passed by the French National Assembly today. It didn't and now it looks like the whole 3 strikes concept is set to go the way of the dodo.

The parallels to the New Zealand situation were uncanny. Like its kiwi counterpart, the French law was roundly criticised by the French public, with most believing it would utterly fail to reduce piracy. Where most New Zealanders had resigned themselves to living under Section 92a, it was pulled at the last minute after the New Zealand government stepped in. After a two hour debate by the French National Assembly, the French law was also rejected. Section 92a may have been pulled, but it is only a temporary reprieve and the French law is also to be voted on again in late April. In both countries, public opinion doesn't look set to change any time either.

Whilst the big question being uttered by policy makers in both countries is likely to something along the lines of "where to from here?", the whole downloading and copyright issue continued to bubble along. The European Parliament has roundly attacked the whole "3 strikes" concept and defined internet access as a "fundamental freedom". Not to be outdone, the Swedes are only days away from passing a verdict on the trial of file sharing service, ThePirateBay.

Even the PirateBay founders are all found guilty, it probably won't spell the end of file sharing as Mininova (another BitTorrent tracker site) broke download records as its download counter displayed a mind boggling 8,000,000,000 downloads. Mininova's explosive growth is not only a potent example of how much a part of internet users lives peer-to-peer file sharing has become, but also of just how much of lucrative opportunity it could present to copyright holders should a commercially viable way of tapping into file sharing be found.

Mininova may have processed enough downloads (and them some) for every man, woman and child on planet earth, but it is only one bittorrent tracker site of many. Even if the studios only manage to tap into a fraction of the bittorrent community, 8,000,000,000 downloads from one tracker service is a very large number indeed. Then there's other associated but equally lucrative opportunities such as leveraging the mountainous volumes of bittorrent data to provide insightful stats to movie, television and music industry players. With robust data available on what's hot and what's not, investments could be made in even more compelling content rather than today's largely hit and miss guess work based on ratings. These are just two opportunities spring to mind, I'd be willing to wager that smarter brains than mine can think of many more.

Whilst draconian 3 strikes legalisation is unlikely to gain any traction in NZ or the EU, legislators are left with the tricky task of appeasing both copyright holders and ensuring that innovation isn't stifled. Laws aside, file sharing (both legitimate and copyright infringing) is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

* Although Pat Pilcher is employed by Telecom he does not represent their views.