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I think the essay does a pretty good job of explaining recent French developments, though it could have been a little clearer about the politics.

But your analysis isn't very useful. If the law is absurd, which it is, and if a climbdown is necessary, which it is, how will it happen? Brussels at the moment is allowing the French experiment to go forward, with the rest of the community expecting that the failure of the HADOPI will spell the end of the music industry's attempt to zombie-ize government into dying for them to protect their business model. Rather than fight with a government that cannot do what it purports to do, and which is about to enter a period of economic collapse that will make 10,000 jobs an even more ridiculously unimportant number, the EC is allowing enough rope for the whole sick bunch of industries to hang themselves.

It is Orange (formerly France Telecomm) that will be primarily damaged by this rubbish. Serving the customer by destroying the customer is not very profitable, and a company already afraid for its future is finding the content industries on which it is forced to depend an even more ugly and overreaching bunch of thugs than usual.

So how does it play out? You can't get by in the 21st century with reporting the news: you have to be right about what it means.

-- EbenMoglen - 30 Nov 2008