Julien Valroff's weblog and personal homepage
HADOPI – meeting with my local representative
Following to the email sent regarding the French law known as “HADOPI” (I blogged about it a few weeks ago), I had a meeting this afternoon with my local representative.
This half an hour meeting allowed me to explain my fears regarding this “firewall” which could be set up on French citizens’ computers to enable them to prove their non-culpability (provided their computer runs a popular proprietary OS).
My representative kindly listened to me and his assistant understood the situation very well. I was even impressed that they have worked a lot on this law before the meeting.
They both proposed to raise this issue to Christine Albanel, the current French Minister for Culture and Communication, who is at the origin of this law. They agreed to say that this wouldn’t be changed for the next lecture (planned for the end of the month), as this particular chapter was meant to be detailed in further texts.
They also admitted that this law had little chance to be really applied as is, as they consider some aspects to be anti-constitutional – they hence think that the French Constitutional Council will prevent this law to be applied, at least as it is when writing this post.
My representative also admitted that this law was somewhat outdated (even if not yet voted!). Actually, this kind of law will ever be outdated…
I kindly thank my representative for his time and his frankness (even if on the bad side for this law, he was very open to my thoughts).
Good to know France is still a real Democracy!
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about 1 year ago
I’m green with envy, here in Spain is far from being a real Democracy, mainly because there are’nt democrats.
No on the Right wing side, no on the Left wing side.
We suffer here a Socialist Govermenment supported by all major anti-Freedom players and lobbies.
It scary their propaganda against sharing, against free access to Culture, etc.
about 1 year ago
Hi,
If I understand what your write, your representative thinks that:
1) on a practical ground, the law can’t be applied
2) on a principle grounds, it is not constitutional
3) yet he supports it, in the sense that he has to vote it
about 1 year ago
Your story is somewhat encouraging, but I can’t help but feel cynical when I read your post. I tend to think that talk is cheap, but action speaks louder. Do you know how your representative is likely to vote, when the time comes? Were they aware of the importance of this law to a certain class of population, and if so, why were they not present at the first vote?
It’s a good thing that they took some time to talk with you and research their subject beforehand, so that defuses my cynicism a little…
Do you trust your representative not to give in to commercial pressure, as our dear president and minister of culture seem to have?
Nevertheless, your story encourages me to do the same with my representative, in Grenoble. How did you come about meeting with your representative?
about 1 year ago
Actually, I guess he will vote the law, given he is part of the UMP. He will simply follow what the heads of the party will say (in that case, it is not a secret!).
As far as I know, he was not assisting the first vote – I am not sure this law is more important that any other law, but it concerns us directly, hence we just all feel more affected by its consequences.
That is a more general problem with the role of local representatives: they have to be in their respective area to be in direct contact with the citizens, while they also have to be in Paris. Forcing them to be in Paris to assist the debates and vote the law would help, but they would then spare less time in their area… And they would vote for laws they do not even understand (we cannot ask our local representatives to know everything on everything, but that is another problem).
In my personal case, I trust my representative when he tells me he fully understands my fears, though it doesn’t make any doubts he will follow the guidelines of his party.
As for the meeting, I sent a simple email a few weeks ago, then sent another email as I hadn’t received any answer: actually, my first email was put with other mass email they have received about this law, hence they only read my second email. Hence you’d better call your local representative’s office directly and ask for a meeting. It is their role to listen to citizen’s fears and problems. My representative seemed quite happy that I dared to contact him for such a specific issue.
Keep me informed if I can be of any help – maybe we can also put our representatives in contact so that they can join their questions to the Minister?
about 1 year ago
Well I am much more sceptic than you on that point (I am french too and also assistant professor in a public university which may explain my scepticism).
A country where a representative choose to follow what the head of his party has decided him to vote is not a “democracy” it is a “party-tocracy”. When voting for our assembly, you did not vote for a party but for a guy. In a democracy, representatives should represent people not party. Political party has no legitimity to represent people, only representative has this full legitimity.
Another way to drive democracy is to elect ideas not people, but this is not the way the french election system works. Even the way we choose our representative and our president is less efficient than in the debian election system.
A country where your representative listen to you and, in brief, says “I listened to you but do not care because I only take order from my party” instead of “I listened to you but do not care because most of people I represent do not think your way” is not a democracy.
A country where people in the main assembly can be elected in city council, which mean could have both law creation (pouvoir legislatif) and law execution (pouvoir exécutif) role at the same time is not a democracy.
On your point about the fact that a representative have to be at the same time in their representative area and in Paris : that is simply not true. During parlemetary session they should be in Paris. Outside these time they should be in their representative area in direct contact, not with their citizen, but with the citizen they represent. No more, no less.
Well anyway my main point is that a country where laws are voted by 21 representatives when 577 ones are elected, where laws are created after each events focused by TV news and not citizen requests, where laws are created just for public relations purpose, where means to apply existing laws is never given, where laws are not applied, where knowledge, health and justice are consider as any other classical commodities, where governants decide to use benchmarking for everything is not a democracy : it is a business.