France Might Boot Music Downloaders from the Internet

French Minister of Culture Christine Albanel has at least one thing in common with U2's manager Paul McGuinness. Like him, she wants to kick music sharers off of the internet if they are suspected of online copyright infringement.

Apparently, the French are beginning to implement the findings of the Olivennes report, endorsed last November by President Sarkozy (who, perhaps not coincidentally, recently married a recording artist).

From Jean-Baptiste Soufron's blog,

The French Olivennes Report on downloading was released a few months ago. Its conclusions are now being implemented by the French Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel.

The draft of the Law Project was revealed yesterday by the French Newspaper Les Echos.

It proposes nothing less than to cut People from Internet when they would download and after they would be warned two times. You read well. The answer to downloading is not to find better economic models, it’s not to implement alternate solutions, it's not even to make DRM mandatory... it's simply to suppress Internet.

To be precise, the project would actually create a downloading high authority called "Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet." It would also allow right owners to monitor Internet users. And they could ask the Authority to warn them through their ISPs. After two warnings, their Internet connection would be cut, and they would be put on a blacklist to prevent them from contracting with a new ISP.

This makes sense, of course, because the record industry's bottom lineis far more important than freedom, communication, or the internet.

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(image from culture.gouv.fr)