Piracy and privacy

Although the governments negotiating the ACTA treaty deny that it will propose sanctions for personal copyright violation, there's an increasing supply of that sort of thing, from those same governments.

The French Assemblée Nationale is today expected to adopt a uniquely invasive measure authorizing a 'High Authority' to monitor the Internet use of individuals for copyright violation.

"The law empowers music and film industry associations to hire companies to analyze the downloads of individual users to detect piracy, and to report violations to a new agency overseeing copyright protection. The agency would be authorized to trace the illegal downloads back to individuals using the downloading computer’s unique identification number, known as its Internet Protocol, or IP, address, which the Internet service providers have on record" Extract from the NY Times

As many commenters in the press have already pointed out, the majority of users have only passive IP-allocation from their ISPs. So, for the majority of users, the IP address is not a secure identifier. Furthermore, the biggest bit-torrent ('p-to-p') suppliers are now moving to offer much more secure and efficient web-proxies that will effectively cloak any HTTP identifiers. One of the many criticisms of the French law is that it does not consider the weakness of the propsed identification and offers no apparent means of user appeal or objection, at least from the initial sanctions.

But it would be foolish to think that these technical weakenesses in the proposed laws in France or eleswhere will protect users' privacy or rights to free speech. Australian internet users may be uniquely vulnerable to technically effective government surveillance of their internet use in the future.

I predict—or at least I hope—that interest in this issue will increase in Australia if the government becomes, as the Prime Mininster proposes, our principal internet supplier. It will be all the more urgent for Australians to consider whether their constituional rights to privacy and free speech are adequately protected by our rickety system of statute and common law, or whether we need constitutional guarantees still more urgently than we need Rudd-net.

It is interesting to note that, although the French draft bill has been solidly backed by the recording industry in France and by Sarkozy's UMP (center-right) party, there is considerable opposition from parts of the Internet industry and from some noteable names in French cinema. In a letter to Libération, a group of these argue that

Aujourd’hui, certains craignent cette révolution et craignent pour leur monopole. La loi Création et Internet répond à une angoisse légitime, que nous partageons : celle de voir les œuvres dévalorisées et dégradées par leur diffusion piratée sur Internet.

Pourtant, cette loi, qui prétend se poser en défenseur de la création, ne fait qu’instaurer un mécanisme de sanctions à la constitutionnalité douteuse et au fonctionnement fumeux.

Fruit d’un lobbying massif, fondée sur la présomption de culpabilité, la loi Création et Internet crée l’Hadopi, une haute autorité contrôlée par l’exécutif et qui pourra, sans qu’aucune preuve fiable ne soit apportée et sans qu’aucun recours gracieux ne soit possible, couper durant une durée extensible à l’infini la connexion Internet d’un usager.

Pis, et contrairement à ce qui a été écrit ici et là, aucune disposition législative ne prévoit que cette procédure se substitue aux poursuites pénales et civiles, faisant de la double peine une réalité envisageable.

[These days there are many who dread this [digital] revolution and fear for their monopoly rights. The "Law on Creativity and the Internet" responds to a genuine worry, that we share: about seeing creative works degraded and devalued by being broadcast on the Internet. But, this law, which claims to be a defense of creativity, acts only to set up sanctions of dubious constitutionality and obscure operation. The "Creativity and Internet" law—the product of a massive lobbying effort— is based on a presumption of guilt. It creates a high authority (HADOPI) controlled by the executive which may, without any reliable evidence and without any appeal, cut a user's internet access for an indefinite period. Worse, contrary to what has been written here and there, there is no legislative guarantee that this procedure will replace criminal and civil prosecution, making double punishment a real possibility.]

Tags for this entry: policy ideas copyright censorship internet nbn piracy law