According to the Business Week article written on September 15, 2009, the country of France is approving a bill that will allow the police and authorities to shut down the Internet usage of someone illegally downloading music/movies/ etc. There are millions and millions of Internet users in the world today and how France is planning on containing the population of Internet users in its country is mind blowing for me. How do they even plan on maintaining a close eye on who downloads what? They need for Internet users to install a program onto the computer user's computer that will allow authorities to watch over what is being done over the time of Internet usage. Does this not violate privacy laws? I would not want the government to watch over everything that I do on the Internet. They would be able to read what I write, see what I see, and etc. I would have no privacy at all on my own computer usage and thus it violates my privacy as a citizen. This bill has been in circulation for the past year, having different versions declined. This latest version that was approved on Tuesday, allows for a judge to make the decision on cutting the Internet usage in a home because of illegal downloading and charging the person with up to 300,000 euros ( which is about $435,000 in US money).
I don't know why this issue isn't being brought up to the bigger public. I would not have known about this bill if I did not read this article. I believe that the government is moving away from a hands off approach to basically violating privacy rights of the public. If France allows this bill to pass, imagine other countries taking on the same law. Yes, illegal downloading is wrong and people should know that ethically it is not right, but people's privacy should not be violated to correct this problem.
You can check out the article by clicking here. I'll try to stay on top of what's next to come.
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