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FRENCH IP-COMMISSION PROMOTES SPYING

On 26 June a special copyright advisory board within the French Ministry of Culture published a report supporting government plans to increase surveillance of Internet users as part of a wider bid to stop the online copying of protected works.

The Superior Council for Artistic and Literary Intellectual Property (Conseil Supérieur de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique, or CSPLA) advises to create a 3 year period of mandatory retention of traffic data by ISP's to help track down online copyright violations and counterfeiting. The legal regime for data retention is set by the law on daily safety (Loi sur la Sécurité Quotidienne - LSQ) from 15 November 2001, even though the application decrees have not been adopted yet. In an earlier response to that law, the French privacy authority CNIL demanded a maximum period of 3 months.

On top of that, in their advice on the implementation of the European Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC, to be transposed in the law on the digital economy) the CSPLA wants explicit legal permission to create databases with the IP-numbers of internet users that share music, films or computer programs. They call on parliament to 'find a solution to allow collecting societies and rightholders to create such files with the sole purpose of protecting their rights.'

That call seems hardly necessary anymore. Even though the CNIL explicitly rejected the creation of such a database in an advice from March 2001, recently the CNIL changed its mind. According to an amendment on the new privacy law drafted by CNIL vice-president and senator Alex Turk, companies that are victims of copyright infringements have the right to collect personal data when related to infringements, judgments and safety measures.

Finally, the commission recommends the future of Digital Rights Management as a system that won't just to be able to check whether files are authorized for legal exchange online, but also able to identify and block file exchanges in any server and router on its way.

The draft law on the digital economy, approved last February by the lower house of Parliament and late June by the Senate, is expected to be passed by the end of this year.

CSPLA report (26.06.2003, in French)
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/cspla/raplibertesindiv.pdf

Article in e-zine Transfert (04.07.2003, in French)
http://www.transfert.net/a9082
 

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