Nowadays in France with Hadopi law “promoting the distribution of creative works and the protection of rights on the internet” , we’re hearing a lot about networks security. Common french people doesn’t know a lot about computers and if you ask them about security protocols on Wifi networks, you’ll lost most of them. But with Hadopi, they’re now responsible about everything that transit via their internet connection. Is it really possible ?

 

A few months back when you’ve received your WiFi router and set it up by default, the majority of them were using WEP security protocol. No need to say how easy it was to access these networks. And the new authorities of Hadopi has been confronted to that problem. Can we all be held responsible if someone intrude our own WiFi ? I’m glad to see that today the standard default protocol used is WPA and often WPA2. That shows that providers are trying to protect their “new” clients, but old clients who never need to change their old routers always use old security measures. And even if I will surely help my family about it, I’m not sure a lot of people will or even can. There’s absolutely no information sent by our government about all this. For most of the french people Hadopi is completely obscure or they don’t care about it : “It’s for hackers and pirates, not for me !”.

 

Why aren’t they scared ? Mostly because they don’t download any illegal files, and until now that was enough to not have any problems. But with Hadopi things have changed. One of the first ten victims, a teacher of economic and social sciences of 54 years,  just got charged for recidivism download. He’s accused in November (2010) to have downloaded some songs of “David Guetta” and “Rihanna”, and the movie “Iron man 2″. He claims that he doesn’t even listen to those artists and that when one of those files was transferred, he wasn’t even home but in a classroom. With Hadopi, no need to check if it was him. It was his internet access, then he will have to defend himself. And if he looses, he may see his internet connection cut off for a month and have to pay 1500€. After a short investigation, it was proved that the service in cause was his “FreeWiFi” network.

 

In a world where social networks becomes so useful and important , where internet is so present and is the best way, and sometime the only one, to share with the world, can we cut someone access to it ?

 

For some countries that’s not an option and Finland is the first one to register internet access as a legal right. And more surprisingly the council of “sages” in France decided that internet is a fundamental human right, and so Hadopi will now need a judge to cut off someone access. Internet isn’t just a technology anymore, it has become a part of our ability to speak freely and a huge possibility to share with everyone without limits. It has changed our view of the world by interconnecting every people with access to it. You can interact with over 2 Billions of individuals, more than 25% of the world population.

 

Hadopi isn’t the only law trying to regulate internet, it’s more of a precursor.

The next step is the ACTA treaty. Even if it’s not directly aimed at internet, it will have a large repercussion on the net world. Free softwares may be in danger; because medias such as music, movies will may be only sold with RDM and such medias cannot be read by free softwares. It’s just an example, but the list of potential threats on internet, as we know it, is long.

I remember when I was a kid, and that wasn’t a long time ago, the feeling I’ve felt when browsing for the firsts times the internet, I was rapt with wonder. I could find everything that I needed to learn always more. Sure there was bad stuff (porn, violence, extremism…) for a people of my age, but that’s not different from the real world. Internet was a window of every mind I could come across in the street, a window on our modern society, its arts, its science, its history, its future and all the dreams and nightmares that come with the people living on this planet. It’s the beauty of the internet. Are we sure that we want to regulate this flow ? Are we sure that we can ? Once someone as tasted so much freedom, could they let it go ?

I don’t think so.