French websites are claiming that a political blog hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google,  has been shut down without explanation. The blog, Torapamavoa, has a blatant anti-Sarkozy stance, and gets 105 660 visitors per month. It is claimed that the site recieved a message without notice, that its service was being suspended owing to a possible violation of its terms and conditions.  At this stage, it is not known whether the suspenion was a deliberate act of political censorship or one of technical incompetence, but either way, the site's owners say they have received no answer from Blogger. 

25 April - the site is now reported back up and running, but  even so, there does not appear to be any explanation for the suspension.  

MEPs are calling on the European Commission and on the French and British governments, not to adopt the "three strikes and you're out"  policies for ISPs. Christofer Fjellner and Michel Rocard, Guy Bono, Helga Trüpel, Francis Wurtz, Christa Prets and Katerina Batzeli  moved an amendment to the so-called Bono report,  asking for the Commission not to adopt policies for the Internet which are  disproportionate and  could infringe human and civic rights. They do not want Europe to adopt proposals for filtering and  blocking of Internet content and the imposition of sanctions on users such as cutting off Internet access.

 The move has no legislative importance but it could be important in positioning European policy on the Internet and ISPs.  The so-called "three strikes and you're out" proposal would mean that ISPs would be asked to warn, suspend and cut off users who were alleged to be infringing copyright rules. The proposal was mooted in France, by the "mission Olivennes", and is being considered by the UK government. 

The vote was on Wednesday April 9th and the amendment was accepted. 

In France, the vote has sparked a political spat between one of the amendment's sponsors, Michel Rocard, and the sponsoring minister, Christine Albanel.   Mme Albanel said, in an interview with

IPRED 2, the proposed Directive which would criminalise commercial IP and copyright  infringements, is a highly controversial piece of legislation, currently stalled in the European Council. Last year, it emerged that the published version in the European Journal, had failed to include an amendment which the Parliament had approved.  The amendment concerns parallel imports. The FFFI and Heise.de websites carried the story. Now, an attempt to uncover what happened to that missing amendment has been thwarted. A request to the Secretary-General of the European Parliament, for disclosure of information related to the missing amendment, has been refused. See FFFI website to read the letter.  It is a serious matter when legislation that has been voted on by the Parliament is found to be altered on publication - the question is, whether this is now a deliberate cover-up? 

What is happening in France? First we read that French ISPs have agreed to a plan with the French government, to police their networks for copyright infringement and to block anyone they deem to be a repeat infringer using P2P filesharing techniques. 

And now we learn that Google Video has been fined over €30,000 for failing to remove repeat postings of a copyrighted video clip. 

These moves represent the latest rounds in a long poliical battle  over file sharing. In 2005, according the Financial Times, French MPs tried to get through a motion to legalise file sharing.

 The UK  government has told the Internet industry to come to an agreement with media companies over how to deal with filesharing. This has prompted some debate in the technology media, as to the rights and wrongs of ISPs being told to police their networks (but sadly little debate outside the technology pages). 

 Read The Guardian's account here.

Read The Register's incisive and different viewpoint here.  

And Silicon.com's view is here.

In a barely noticed move, the Swiss have brought in what, on the face of it, looks to be a draconian piece of copyright legislation. I only picked it up via a short posting on Slashdot. Reading the text of the law, it appears to say that anyone who: creates a derivative work; circulates examples of a work without holding the right to do so,   or who listens to or watches such examples, will be punished by imprisonment of a year. Anyone who does so in the context of their job, will be sacked, and subject to a fine of up to 100,000 Swiss Francs.

A campaign has been started to collect signatures  - under a different Swiss law, 50,000 signatures will secure a Referendum, but they must be collected by 24 January 2008.  

There's a letter reproduced on p2pnet.net which is worth reading for its rather astonishing conclusion. The site has reproduced a letter received by a Swedish website called The Pirate Bay, sent by  a group of media industry associations including the IFPI, the International Publishers Association, the European Film Companies Alliance.  It makes the allegation (which I can neither substantiate nor disprove) that The Pirate Bay is responsible for copyright infringement, and it goes on to  state  that Sweden is a "haven for a cult of copyright infringement that has achieved global reach".  Whatever this site has or hasn't been doing, I fail to see how that makes an entire country rampant with  copyright infringers - the logic, I'm afraid, just passes me by.

The European Parliament's Culture and Education committee has voted on a draft report in respect of culture and the Lisbon agenda. According to reports on some US-based websites, it has rejected amendments in favour of ISP filtering and copyright term extensions. I would make a couple of comments here. The Lisbon agenda relates to economic growth in Europe, but it has no budgetary commitment and operates purely as an inter-governmental umbrella policy. Secondly, the vote did not relate to any legislation, as far as I can see. And thirdly, I can't find the final report on the EP website!! However, I look forward to seeing the confirmation of those US reports.

Updated 25th March 2008: The plenary vote on the Bono report will be on 10th April.  Rumours from Brussels suggest there will be another attempt by the industry lobby groups to get amendments included. The significance of the report is that it may set the tone for policy, even though it is not a legislative document.

As the EU and member state governments consider what policy action to take on downloading and piracy, there is an article in The Guardian that presents food for thought. 

The article, sparked by a Merrill Lynch report entitled 'Do movies make money?' , discusses a much wider breakdown of the old movie business model, including costs driven up by multi-million dollar residual deals with ths stars, a 'marketing arms race' and increased spend on special effects at a time when  domestic revenues are declining and - this one should interest the EU - US films are losing market share overseas. It also mentions a lesser known snippet - that the industry has been awash with hedge fund cash.