France Adopts the Three-Strike Law (the new version)

The new anti-file sharing law was passed by The National Assembly yesterday by a margin of 285-225

Over the last few years France has been continuously the setting where the fight against illegal file sharing met the fight for keeping the Internet privacy intact. Yesterday, the much controversial law HADOPI (shortly described as "the three strikes" rule) which we covered a number of times, was again the subject of the day as it a second version of it passed into law.

The new version stipulates that Internet cut offs of up to a year can be ordered by a single judge in a "streamlined" proceeding, while those Internet users who are not careful enough as to "secure" their connections can also be held liable in case other persons use those connections to engage in illegal file sharing.

HADOPI 2 was also met with criticism by La Quadrature du Net, a French digital rights group that doesn’t consider this version much improvement compared to the previous one mainly because its judicial procedure "so far restricted to only a few categories of simple litigation such as traffic regulation—fails to guarantee the right to a fair trial. It does not include any contradictory debate or public hearing; the ruling is made without any prior judicial investigation."

The Senate wanted things done and over with as quickly as possible and already passed the legislation.