We make our living selling, designing, strategizing, building and launching marketing programs online. From Twitter to PURLs, from Facebook to WordPress, the Internet is our sandbox and we like to play. Sometimes I feel sorry for people that don’t get to do what I do for a living.
Without people tuned into the Internet we’d be up that proverbial creek without that oar, paddle, same thing. So when a government starts talking crazy talk, I pay attention. Let me start by saying piracy on the web is bad and should be stopped. I don’t want people stealing our hard work or that done by anyone else, but the French Senate just past something that feels a lot like a slippery sloop. At the risk at getting overly political, a big no-no on this blog, let me say that when a government starts talking about banning people from the Internet I get nervous.
The French passed their equivalent of the “three strikes and your out” rule for Internet piracy. Get caught stealing once, a warning, twice, another warning, but on the third time you will be banned from using the Internet for one year. How do they do that? That’s really the scary part.
Credit: Telegraph.co.uk, Sarkozy & Bruni support ban.
If you steal a book from the library, another book and a third book, should the French government ban you from reading all books? Hey, it’s Memorial weekend here in the good ol’ USA. I’m feeling kind of patriotic today. Let’s coin a new phrase for having a government, any government, ban you from the Internet. It’s called “Getting Frenched.”
The Internet’s evolution is uncertain, but a ban here, a ban there and we’re all Frenched.
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