Paris, January 13rd 2004
French draft law on digital economy: 10 million french Internet users presumed guilty
The whole Internet industry believes this law will endanger the growth of the Internet in France.
This draft law implements the EU e-commerce Directive and aims to clarify the legal framework of the Internet in France.
In the second reading, the lower House of the Parliament has adopted the following measures:
A judge can order an Internet access provider to block access to specified content
Hosting providers must monitor all the content they host to prevent certain types of content (racial hatred and child porn material) being published by Internet users
E-mails are no longer covered by the secrecy of correspondence
Since 1998, AFA and its member ISPs have worked closely with public authorities and especially, on a day- to-day basis, with Law enforcement authorities. The Internet industry believes these new measures are pointless to tackle the issues they are supposed to address.
These measures are a threat to freedom of speech and will economically damage the Internet sector. AFA members have a turnover of almost 2 billion euros and employ more than 10 thousand people.
Internet: presumed guilty
Despite 2 years of efforts from the Internet Industry, the French Telecommunications Regulator (ART) and the French Internet Rights Forum, to explain the technical part of the Internet, Members of the Lower House of Parliament have confirmed their choice to block Internet access in France.
Giving in to the simplistic proposals of the music industry aimed at fighting online piracy, the French government and the Members of Parliament have decided to adopt an inefficient measure, which was so far the sad privilege of States such as Burma, China or Iran.
The draft law is hardly any fairer towards hosting providers, who will soon have to monitor all content they host. Even if the draft bill seems to restrict the monitoring to content inciting racial hatred or to child porn content, it is indeed all the content i.e. web pages; chat; forums, etc. they host that hosting providers will need to monitor and check before they allow it to be uploaded on their servers.
Such monitoring is technically not feasible and will turn hosting providers into censors and private judges. Moreover this will impact all hosted content (the vast majority being legal), leading to the risk that some removal of hosted content will take place only to safeguard hosting providers’ liability. In the short term, such an obligation will probably lead to the removal of several Internet services which are the core of the Internet.
Finally, under the guise of solving the problem of online piracy, the lower chamber of the Parliament has decided to weaken the status of e-mails. What trust will French citizens have in e-mails if e-mails are no longer considered as private communication?
With those measures, the French government and the Lower House of the Parliament, in breach of the EU e-commerce Directive, have decided to impose on access and hosting providers measures which are technically unrealistic and which do not provide any answers to the problem such measures are supposed to solve. These measures will also have a cost which will be passed on to consumers and will question the existence of several actors of the Internet.
AFA is very concerned that the French Government and the Lower House have adopted a draft bill “on trust in the digital economy” which expresses mistrust towards core players of the internet sector at a time when France is about to catch up with the rest of Europe.
Contact:
Stéphane Marcovitch
Executive Director
French ISP Association
Tel. +33 1 70 91 19 64
Communiqué
