[Chapter-delegates] ISOC France and Hadopi

[charles.simon at isoc.fr]

>
>> Alas it now seems more than likely that the Hadopy draft law will
>> pass in
>> France.
>>
>> So ISOC France is now working on the next step, with other French
>> organisations, including the main consumer group in France and La
>> Quadrature du Net which some of you may have heard of.
>
> I have spoken about the likelyhood of the law passing parliament with
> a French university Professor who is well versed on those matters,
> including French constitution.
> Having studied the proposal in question, he alerted me to the fact
> that the law might not be enforcable and is likely to be blocked by
> the "Conseil Constitutionnel", since it infringes directly several
> clauses of the French constitution.
>
> Furthermore, it is lilely that the law will also be deemed
> unenforceable if it clashes with any European law.

All the above is correct however:

- betting on the French Constitutional Court to declare the law null and
void is actually just this: a bet;

- there is always a latency between the moment an "unlawful" law is passed
and the moment it is investigated by the Courts in light of the European
law (especially if the said European law has to be transposed in the local
regulations first).  In the meantime, people will be prosecuted and
punished.

Furthermore, others French draft laws are in the process, intending to
create official blacklists at the network-level and to impose deep packet
inspection under cover of fighting off Child pornography and illegal
online betting sites (the current plan is for online betting sites to be
authorised in France starting on 1 January 2010).

So ISOC-FR has plenty to worry about at the moment.

But again we're grateful for the work done by ISOC-ECC and other Chapters
and are looking forward to working with Isoc-HQ and all the interested
Chapters on this kind of issues.

Regards,

Charles