THE FRENCH PARLIAMENT has buckled under pressure and approved the Sarkozy government's authoritarian plans to censor the Internet.

NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is among the studios on whose behalf Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is sending its ISP subscribers notices that they are suspected of violating copyrights on filesharing networks, CNET News.com reported, citing multiple unnamed sources. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was reported last week to have engaged Verizon to deliver copyright letters on its behalf; an undisclosed number of other studios and copyright owners have made similar requests.

at&t's top lobbyist, jim cicconi, sent a letter to all of the telecom giant's 300,000 employees on sunday, urging them to express their concerns over a net neutrality proposal under consideration by the federal communications commission. check out his letter and comments on the actuarian outpost web site.

It already failed to pass once. Then, it was then struck down by the French Constitutional Council. The final vote fell along strictly partisan lines, and even so, 40 or so of his own deputies voted against it. Yet in spite of it all, last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy finally succeeded in passing an amended version of the much maligned and, many say, fundamentally flawed anti-illegal downloading bill, known as the loi Hadopi. Whether this is a tribute to the tenacity or to the obstinacy of the French leadership is unclear. [...]

Ed Markey (D-MA) is a big fan of "third time's the charm." He has introduced his plan to legislate network neutrality into a third consecutive Congress, and he has a message for ISPs: upgrade your infrastructure and don't even think about blocking or degrading traffic.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/the-war-over-network-neu...

France's highest legal authority struck down a key provision of a controversial law that would have cut off Internet access to people who repeatedly download copyrighted content illegally.

The decision is a setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy, who argued that the law was crucial to protecting artistic creation in the digital era. It was a victory for activists and Socialist politicians who bitterly opposed the law as an invasion of privacy. [...]

Jérémie Zimmerman, an activist who had opposed the law, called the decision "a great victory for citizens" and said that without the provision cutting off Internet access, the law was just a "big tax-sponsored spam machine."

What can musicians do when nobody wants to buy their records anymore? Just take a glance into the World Wide Web and it’s clear to see: opportunities for becoming famous there have never been greater. But when it comes to making money, that’s when things get difficult. [...]

Jeremie Zimmermann, a net activist from Paris, who campaigns against the French law for Internet bans, which threatens users caught sharing files three times with a cap on their online access for a period of several months, no longer believes the concept of earning money with “1:1” copies, as he calls them, works. “It’s over, finished”, the 31-year old says. The digital era has simply made it too easy to reproduce content without any loss in quality and too difficult to explain to today’s users why they should pay money for digital content. He even has an idea at the ready how artists will be able to make a living in future. People are still willing to pay good money for events, concerts, meetings with stars or even merchandising.

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material." [...]

Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music. I'd like more details. [...]

In recent weeks, the chorus of calls for further "protections" for copyright owners has grown louder (see, for example, Mark Helprin's May 11 broadside in the Wall Street Journal against copyright critics: "Copyright Critics Rationalize Theft"). Yet these copyright apologists ignore how copyright owners overreach and hurt innovation. Representing more than 2,000 American technology companies, I see it differently - the rapid expansion of copyright laws threatens new and innovative products and services. [...]

As European lawmakers debate how to keep access to the Internet free and equal - so-called network neutrality - they are being bombarded, not unsurprisingly, by lobbyists. [...]

"The U.S. companies see the outcome of the fight in Europe as key," said Jeremie Zimmermann,a lobbyist for La Quadrature du Net,an Internet advocacy group based in Paris. "Each side is hoping to score points on the issue here so they can take it back to the States to influence the outcome there."