So when it came to it, all the haggling, the petitioning and the argument-winning came to nothing. Despite two resounding votes by the European Parliament to safeguard Internet access with judicial oversight (quite a modest safeguard actually - a complete ban on ANY disconnection would have better), the toothless nature of European democracy showed itself as the Telecoms Package's Amendment 138 was simply dropped and replaced with some waffle. Ian Scales reports.
Which means, dear reader and viewer, that Sarkozy's three strikes programme gets a boost and those who would have other jurisdictions follow the French lead and install similar measures in the rest of the EU will feel the wind is behind them. At least for the moment...
The original Amendment 138 made it into the Telecoms Package last year when it became apparent that the content industries were pushing hard for nation states to introduce so-called '3 strikes' measures under which Internet users accused of 'illegal' file sharing or downloading could be warned, warned again and then disconnected from the Internet on the say-so of some deep packet inspection kit.
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