back to article French court: Google, Microsoft en ami must say 'au revoir' to pirates

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have been told by France's High Court to prevent netizens from using their portals to search for 16 video-streaming websites. A number of French ISPs were also told to block access to sites such as allostreaming and Fifostream over their networks. As ever, such action will not outright stop users …

COMMENTS

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  1. o5ky

    So they get a court order to block 16 domain names which takes months... and it takes minutes to set a new one up, why bother?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ah mon ami, mais c'est pour l'honneur bien sur !

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Dozens of proxies are already up.....

  2. Graham Marsden
    Big Brother

    So first...

    ... they ban searching for the websites...

    ... then they ban searching for workarounds...

    ... then they ban any search engines which won't comply with the ban...

    ... then all search terms have to be approved by a government flunky (your search results will be available in the next three days...)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My biggest issue with legal IP is geolocking. I cannot access a lot of content when I'm traveling outside of US and UK because they lock out my IP address. Netflix is horrible for that. I watch half a show, then jump on a plane, and cannot even see the show listed until I return home.

    Making sites illegal then not allowing people to legally access those programs is NOT the way to discourage piracy.

    1. Tim Brown 1
      Holmes

      Yep, geolocking is stupid, it's also trivial (if a little cumbersome) to bypass by using proxies. It's time the media companies realised that the internet is worldwide and their rights should be too.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re: world-wide rights.

        True, but then they'd only be able to sell the rights once, instead of 142 time (or however many countries there are today.)

  4. jonathanb Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Disappointed

    I normally use these court orders to update my list of sites I should be visiting.

    Fifostream asks me to "Veuillez désactiver votre bloqueur de publicité"

    No thanks

    Allostreaming asks me to "Téléchargez Webplayer pour voir vos vidéos"

    Absolutely no chance of that

  5. tony72

    France is weird

    I understand the rationale for blocking the actual sites, but what's up with blocking them from appearing in search results?

    If you click a link to a blocked site in your search results, and you get a page saying "Site blocked because ABC", then you're informing the user about the illegality of the site, letting them know that that type of site is blocked, and warning them about the type of sites they visit. That's what happens here in the UK at the moment (sort of).

    If however you try and disappear the sites from the search results entirely, you miss that informational aspect of the block, and it also seems much more like sinister censorship; it's one thing to block content, it's another to block content in such a way that people may not even know it's blocked, or even that it existed in the future.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: France is weird

      That's because massive media conglomerate Vivendi happens to be French. I'll leave you to fill in the rest of the dots.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yet another attempt to make watching "free" content as painfully awful as the legitimate channels.

    You know, the content vendors could make their efforts as pain free and as compelling as the Netflix model.

    Give the people what they want at a reasonable price, not stuffed with ads, convenient, without cramming it full of messages telling you that you're a fucking criminal, and able to watch it whenever and wherever they want and people will pay for it. Most of the pirating would just dry up.

    1. phil dude
      Meh

      yes and...

      In fact an experiment has already been done, as mentioned, by Netflix. As a trans-atlantic commuter I was thrilled my US account worked in the UK, only the content was *radically* different.

      I would be interested to see if there is an objective comparison of this phenomenon i..e which titles etc... are missing between the 2 English speaking markets.

      Here in the USA there is also RedBox, which partly fills the Netflix gap - usually very near (even by Euro standards) and cheap (sometimes < $1), and 24 hour (outside grocery stores.) for a DVD. They often have first run DVD's quite a bit before they are streaming.

      The reality is, this is simply too convenient for those in power - any excuse whatsoever to limit the public access to information , is good enough.

      An objective list of all media not available for legal streaming vs pirating vs language, would be an interesting study...

      P.

  7. Oh Homer
    Pirate

    Mon Dieu! Sacrebleu! C'est d'la marde!

    However, thankfully Teh Internets has no borders, so unless the MAFIAA® gets its wish for a One World Government (euphemistically referred to as "multilateralism"), thus assuming dictatorial control over every country, they're pissing in the wind.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The internets have no borders?

      Try to say that to the Chinese, the Iranians or the north Korean..

      ..

      And before doing your little freetard dance.... remember that the internet is not a "gift of nature"...

      The internet is ONLY possible because there are international telecommunication networks that are costing billions to set up and operate.. and that are owned either by governments or by a few major Telco companies.

      In other words don't take free international web surfing as a "right" we do it on sufferance - from those that own or control the telecommunication pipes...

      And guess what

      1. Oh Homer

        Re: The internets have no borders?

        You mean those "international telecommunication networks" that we "freetards" Internet subscribers pay for?

        But what that has to do with the borderless nature of Teh Internets, "freetards" or anything else, I'm not sure. I have to pay to make a phone call or send a letter too, that doesn't mean I'm not free to do so.

        I think you must be one of those materialist-obsessed nuts who's incapable of distinguishing between freedom and money.

        For example, censorship in China, Iran, North Korea and other totalitarian regimes, like the UK, has nothing to do with money. Similarly, the reason the oppressed people of those regimes circumvent that censorship, using a variety of methods (much to the chagrin of those regimes' respective dictators), has nothing to do with money either.

        But please carry on screaming gibberish about "freetards", if it makes you sleep easier.

  8. Charles 9
    FAIL

    Aw come on, government types. Why don't you come out and say what you REALLY want: a government-approved Internet whitelist so that you can go to these addresses and ONLY these addresses?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who the fuck...

    Wants to watch Russel Brand's latest DVD anyway?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The French High Court are obviously idiots. They're blocking search engines linking to sites which in turn are linking to torrents. Taking that as a precedent -two steps from an illegal thing is forbidden in itself- would render most of the web forbidden. In practical terms it's going to do absolutely sod-all apart from publicise the sites in question.

    Legislators should be banned from passing judgement on subjects that they know fuck-all about, in my view. Plus the judgement itself is evidence of corruption...clearly nobody in that courtroom had a fucking clue what they were doing which rather precludes the point of doing it at all. Also, they are playing out of their jurisdiction.

  11. All names Taken

    Well it seems that one nation can insist on Google, ISP s etc to do stuff and they do it even if giving the hump.

    On the other hand France requests stuff and nobody seems to hear.

    Or maybe they do hear but it seems on lines of "so wot France"?

  12. austerusz

    " illegally shared content containing their own intellectual property." - this formulation bothers me greatly.

    If it's my own IP and I decide to share it ... how can that be illegally shared?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all good

    It's going to continue to get tougher to pirate and more pirates are going to prison because they are too dumb to be on the streets.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's all good

      On the streets? Pirates operate on the high seas, or inside a building with computers and stuff. You might be thinking of muggers and pimps.

    2. Oh Homer
      Pirate

      Re: "more pirates are going to prison"

      A few down, seven billion to go.

      Does the MAFIAA® seriously believe it can stop everyone? And yes, I mean everyone, including hypocrites like you, has at some point violated copyright law. Why? Because it's an immoral and indeed ambivalent law, that criminalises copying and sharing on the one hand, but permits and enforces the monopolisation of derivative works (which would be all of them) on the other.

      The "logic" that distinguishes a "pirate" from a legally-sanctioned plagiarist seems to be based purely on the size of one's bank account, and thus one's ability to pay expensive liars lawyers, not on the basis of whether or not anything has actually been "copied" per se, because it's always copied, one way or another. It's simply not possible to "create" anything without at least some degree of "copying".

      Copyright is clearly wrong, it doesn't make any sense, and that's why nobody outside the criminal "IP" cartel gives a flying fuck about it.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks movie biz groups; half a dozen new sites I didn't know about until now :)

  15. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Where there's a www

    There's a way.....

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Never heard of those sites before, I'd check them out if I was so inclined.

  17. Sanctimonious Prick

    So if the sites have been ordered to shut down, how come the search results need to be modified? That just doesn't make sense!

    I reckon it'd be a good idea to block the whole of France at the BGPs. Maybe that'd make them have a rethink! Twats!

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