SpiralTruth

Looks like France is well on its way to becoming a pioneer in overly harsh anti-piracy legislation. Get accused of pirating three times and you lose your internet access for a year. The legislation is still pending approval from the lower house of parliament. I seem to remember Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing suggesting that when adopting any of these three strike policies, there should be a reverse policy – if you make three spurious copyright infringement accusations, your internet gets cut off. But then, maybe the big media companies could operate without internet connections. Their business models certainly suggest that they have no awareness of this new medium that can do their advertising for them, reduce the cost of production, add value to products, etc., etc. The article identifies one of the goals of the legislation being to drive citizens to legitimate online music sellers like iTunes – which is interesting because Apple seems to be doing just fine with iTunes sales without the legislation. In fact, when Steve Jobs announced Apple’s entry into the market, he rightfully brushed the piracy issue off, saying that all iTunes needed to do was offer a better product at a reasonable price.