To everyone's surprise, the vilified HADOPI law, also known as three-strikes-and-you're-disconnected has been repelled by the parliament 21 votes against and 15 for. Yes, you read that correctly. Out of 577 MPs in France, only 36 were in the house. Apparently, most of the members of the presidential party (including Frédéric Lefebvre, an ardent defensor of censorship and internet disconnections) were off to lunch.
The presidential party is now blaming the opposition for having had "hidden MPs" in the house so that the presidential party members thought it was safe to grab a sandwich while the vote was happening. I'm torn between glee at the fact the law has been repelled and disgust at the state of our democracy where MPs paid by taxpayer's money can't be even bothered to show up to vote.
I'm also struck at the similarity between this and the plotline from West Wing 6x17, "A Good Day". Someone in the opposition knows his US TV Series classics!
Sadly, this is just a glitch in the process since the government is now allowed to slightly amend the text and ask for a revote. The same thing happened during the vote of the DAVDSI law three years ago on the same topics, and it was revoted a few weeks later.
Since it's better to laugh about it, within minutes of the vote the excellent Martin Vidberg crowdsourced through twitter a "top 5 reasons Presidential Party MPs were not there to vote" which I reproduce here:
HADOPI Law repelled 21 votes against 15!
What were the UMP members of parliament doing?
First row, left: I was finishing the download of the complete Yves Duteil*. Man, did this guy compose a lot of stuff!
Second row, right: It's because... they had French fries at the Parliament Restaurant!
Third row, left: I was there! I was asleep, but I was there!
Fourth row, right: Parliament? What's that?
Fifth row, left: I was destroying my hard drive... and all my beautiful divx movies...
* Yves Duteil is a French equivalent of Bob Dylan (sub-par, IMO)
