Internet censorship against streaming in France?

Paris, December 1st, 2011 – Several French trade associations representing producers, publishers and video distributors are filing for an injunction against Internet Service Providers and several online platforms, requesting access be censored to several websites offering audiovisual works streaming.¹See the following article in Le Monde, in French: http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2011/12/01/vaste-plainte-demandant-le-blocage-de-sites-de-streaming-en-france_1611460_651865.html.

“Resorting to censorship to fight streaming websites is a repressive slippery slope, both disproportionate and extremely worrying for fundamental freedoms. This injunction is not surprising, after Nicolas Sarkozy’s repeated declarations²During his 2010 greetings to the cultural world, Nicolas Sarkozy already considered that “We must […] quickly experiment filtering schemes which aim to automatically de-pollute networks and servers of all sources of piracy.”
See also French Intellectual Property Code article L336-2, created by the HADOPI law, which authorises a judge to order filtering measures, on which is based the lawsuit. relaying the film and music industry’s lobbies’ demands. Such measures intend to turn Internet censorship into an acceptable tool for enforcing copyright, eventually leading to generalising its use. Collateral damage for freedom of speech and the privacy of personal communications would be terrible. There are other ways to go after intermediaries who profit from the distribution of cultural works, but before anything else we must recognise the legitimacy and usefulness of not-for-profit sharing between individuals, the repression of which has led to the sharp increase in streaming websites’ revenues.” says Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.