The European Commission has asked the French government to clarify a number of points in respect of its Creation and Internet law, which will impose graduated response / 3 strikes measures onto Internet users.

The Commission’s requests have been made public in what appears to be a leaked document, published by the French news website La Tribune. In particular, it has asked for clarification on internal market and fundamental rights issues. It wants the information before the law is adopted,  and therefore appears to be asking France for a  temporary halt on the process until these matters are clarified:

"Les autorités françaises sont invitées à prendre en considération les remarques qui précédent ainsi qu'à fournir les clarifications demandées avant de procéder à l'adoption de leur projet notifié"

Interestingly, the Commission also confirms that the ‘fight against piracy’ and ‘co-operation’ between telecoms operators and rights holders for this purpose, is being discussed currently in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers – in the context of the Telecoms Package review. This is an admission from the Commission which its PR material seeks to gloss over. And the Commission calls for a balanced approach in the handling of filtering measures in the Universal Services directive.

Specific matters on which

Read more: EU presses the pause button on HADOPI law

A French court decision earlier this month means that a law suit against the open source software hub, SourceForge, and three peer-to-peer sites including Vuze, can go ahead. If anything signals that graduated response and "co-operation" measures represent an attack on the Internet industry, this could be it.

A Paris court has decided that US-based owners of Internet services can be sued in France under French law, according to a report on the French news site Liberation . The ruling applies to case filed by the French music producers association, the SPPF (Societe de producteurs de phonogrammes francaises) in June  2007. The case was filed against three  US-based organisations - Sourceforge, Vuze, Morpheus -  and Limewire was added at the end of 2007. 

The SPPF accused them of copyright infringement, after having obtained evidence via

Read more: Music producers get green light to sue Sourceforge, Vuze

I have written a briefing paper on the French Creation and Internet law (Project de Loi favorisant la diffusion et la protection de la creation sur l’Internet).

Called The French law on Creation and Internet – contracting for surveillance it asks the question whether the new law will usher in a new era of electronic surveillance. This is the law which will support graduated response / 3 strikes measures. The paper  summarises the key elements of th law. Peer-to-peer downloads and user-generated content sites will be monitored for potential breaches of copyright - this is self-evident, it is the only way that the rights-holders can collect the evidence. Web surfing records will have to be trawled to link the user to the alleged infringing content - again, this is the only way it can be done. And people at home will have to have a form of self-imposed surveillance, in order to stay within the law, although it is not yet totally clear how this is envisaged to operate. But it will all be in their contract with their Internet Service Provider - and although not well understood, the contract is the mechanism for implementing  the law.

You can read the paper by downloading it here.