Commissioner Barnier spoke yesterday in a conference on Creative industries: innovation and growth. He announced “a major initiative to focus on ISPs to fight online piracy because he doesn’t want to criminalise consumers”. He added that this strategy will be developed with Commissioners Kroes (digital agenda) and Vassiliou (culture). This announcement signals a new stage in the war against sharing in the digital sphere: after suing users for infringement, after automated sanctions and the criminalization of some tools, policy is now after depriving users of the means to share by exerting pressure on ISPs. Just like the “graduated response” or three-strike approaches were presented as softer than infringement cases, transforming ISP in police auxiliaries is presented as “avoiding to ciminalize” users, that is it treats them all as criminals preventively. More at: http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=3093&lang=en