TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

0 French Films Were Pirated Between May and December 2011

It’s no secret that copyright lobbyists do whatever it takes to justify stronger anti-piracy measures, but sometimes they take things too far.

Comments made by the Nicolas Seydoux, President of the French film company Gaumont and the local anti-piracy outfit ALPA, are a good example.

In a recent article he praises actions that were taken in France to stop piracy. The HADOPI three-stikes law in particular has been rather effective according to Seydoux.

In fact, the anti-piracy efforts achieved what no one thought would be possible. It completely killed online movie piracy.

“Between 15 May and 15 December 2011, no French film has been downloaded from the Internet,” Seydoux claims.

Now that’s what we call effective….

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • Luis Carvalho

    So, the French Film Company Gaumont is happy that their films are completely ignored and irrelevant to the point that no one even wants them for free?

    This tells a lot of the quality of their films, does it not?

    • Anonymous

      I think they like it like that.  It lets them stay in their little Cannes/French bubble universe where they can exercise their ‘superiority’ to all other studios without being laughed at.

    • Anonymous

      To be honest, for most people french films are more like legal pornos…..I mean my friends sometimes watch french films just for the stuff in it, and not the story. But hey, it takes all kinds to make the world rite?

      But I just really want to ask one thing….WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT FRENCH MOVIES?

      • Lukas

        Legal porno?
        I have never heard of illegal porno..

        • Mwhahaha

          You’re clearly not going to the right sites then…

    • yay

      Nonsense. If it was true that French movies aren’t being pirated, why does this French movie (f89da81ae83d6bb070fea5a970a45d27d041a362) has more than 150 seeders and (currently) more than 50 leechers?

    • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

      @google-e438b9e7677275eed27bf7cc653d0104:disqus
      The first thing I thought. If it’s not in the file sharing world (even if there’s no IP from the country downloading) it’s rubbish. I pity those ppl, they are so irrelevant that no1 took the effort of making their movies available.

      I’m sure Hollywood will reach those record lows at some point, giving the current quality of their plots and the limited spectrum of choice.

  • Ma3lstr0m

    being french myself, i can assure you all that a fair few have been downloaded…

    • https://twitter.com/#!/OffensivAtheist bismarket

      While i disagree with some of the posters here that claim ALL French cinema is bad (don’t/can’t read subtitles?) The suggestion that NO French Movies were downloaded is clearly false. Who does he think he’s kidding?

    • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

      Obviously. They are monitoring a very limited spectrum of the file sharing alternatives.

  • Djeife

    Foreigner living in France here, French movies SUCK for most of them (a few exceptions exist), but the French people do download a fair amount of American movies :)

    • John Space

      “movies SUCK for most of them”

      Just like those from other countries. Including USA.

      • Djeife

        You’re right, but the overall quality, including scenario, special effects, casting, (and jokes for comedy movies) stays superior. But after all, it’s just my opinion, and many may disagree ;)

        • Anonymous

          What about special effects? I certainly like French films better than Hollywood films (and I’m not French). Those huge Hollywood budgets are silly: you need a good story and good actors, that’s the essence.

  • Anonymous

    So they have a system in place that is able to monitor every single thing that is downloaded from every person?

    I’d like to know just how they figured out that not a single person pirated a movie.

    • Djeife

      They can’t, their HADOPI system is a complete failure, you could get all the movies you wanted on MU a few months ago and their systems wouldn’t see a thing – it only could see through some p2p protocols. Now people use local networks to exchange files (p300, DC++…) – at least here at the university – and some more experienced users use a VPN to connect to peers worldwide and exchange files using bittorent. You can do it with your normal french connection, but you could get a letter from your ISP and even pay a fine. Using a proxy makes you invisible to HADOPI’s eyes.

  • Reader

    Only French movies i’ve ever liked are the Parkour titles, District B13, how have recently released French movies been rated, maybe that is more of an issue here, if they’re not even worth downloading?

    • Ophelia Millais

      I don’t know about recent movies, but I’m concerned that some of my most beloved French films of the ’90s aren’t getting enough exposure. Fans of imaginative worlds should at least watch The City of Lost Children (with subtitles, not the half-assed English dub). And if you like something a little more real, La Haine.

      • M.

        Most films with Bouchitey are worth watching: Lune froide, les demons de Jesus… etc..

      • blah

        +1 for La Haine. Great French film. I personally don’t think French films suck in general. They’re usually a lot more high brow than your average US production, but not as full as special FX to keep the dullards happy.

  • Anonymous

    Better question….
    how many were actually released in that timeframe in a format that could be shared?

    • lip

      but….but….but….these named files where never shared.

      4 of the thousands of movies released,  but not shared in that period.

      Les.Couleurs.Des.Sentiment.(2011).FRENCH.BDRip
      Warrior.2011.TRUEFRENCH.DVDSCR.MD.XviD
      Twilight.Chapitre.4.Revelation.Cam.French
      The.Thing.2011.VOSTFR.TS.XviD-PROPER

      true story

      • Anonymous

        Pretty sure the last 2 were not “French” films. I am pretty sure they are trying to make Hodiopimcmuffinlamenameican’tremeber look like it is actually stopping the evils of piracy on the digital seas. It is very easy to make that claim when no movies were released on the dates in question, and well they’ve lied before about how well their system works.
        So I am still wondering if anyone knows if there was anything released in that timeframe by the studios, it would be intresting to see the theatrical release dates as well as the dates it was on VOD or a plastic disc.
        Kinda thinking the headline should have been No French Films releases between May and December…

  • Pazy2000

    that “no download” statment is – of course – bull shit,
    and I’d very much like to add : haters are ignorants

  • Anonymous

    What isn’t said however is how many English movies were downloaded? Just because no french ones weren’t downloaded doesn’t mean no piracy at all. It also doesn’t take into effect the huge spike in VPN sales/use. Just because they didn’t detect it it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen

    Now of course I may have misread the article but this is my view on the situation.

  • Viirah

    hahaha. thats so stupid.
    Lame french movies + Hadopi, never stopped anyone from downloading anyway.
    The Hadopi law is totally ineffective, the only persons ever being caught were the one using outdated technologies without any protection. Kazaa / Emule and all those craps. On the other hand, with even a little bit of protection (even windows firewall), you can do whatever you want.
    Direct download and torrents download grew a lot in France since the anti-piracy law was adopted. Every single movie ever being shown one day in a theater, even the cheapest could be found for free on the internet the other day.

    French politicians think that the things they are unable to see are not happening. Never before, closing your eyes brought so much self satisfaction.

  • just_me

    i don’t give a shit about French movies pirated or not. it dosn’t matter to be honest i am not really care about downloading movies “but there are some exceptions”.
    But i think what Seydoux means is the dubbed version of the US mivies.
    95% of  FRENCH MOVIES SUCK 

    • Named

      Have you see 100% of french movies to be able to make the judgement? Otherwise, you cannot use that statement, it’s inaccurate.

  • 7seven85

    It’s because Frech movies sucks…

  • Eeee

    Now where are those numbers of huge sales boost. They should be making 100000x more money with no more pirated movies,, oooohhh my ass , now they claim that no more pirating is made and sales are as shit as before or even worse

  • Le Wut?

    Meanwhile, In Reality…

    French users are a major BitTorrent demographic on I2P, downloading French and non-French films to their heart’s content, secure in the knowledge that if ALPA doesn’t see them, they don’t exist.

    • https://twitter.com/#!/OffensivAtheist bismarket

      Good point, i wonder if he could be called as a witness for the defence?

    • yay

      That’s what I thought. French content is pretty widespread on I2P, including movies (both over torrents and iMule). Hell, there’s even a French-specific torrent index. There’s probably as much French, German and Russian content on I2P as English/American.

      So… no, the statement is simply not true. He would be smarter if we used phrases that are less easy to disprove, like “Piracy of French movies has diminished by random-number-taken-out-of-my-arse%.”, but noooooo, they had to go full retard and start talking obviously untrue crap.

  • townie2

    i agree with all the previous comments. this statement tells me either
    a) French movies suck
    b) the stats are bull
    or c) everyone started using a VPN.

  • Noone

    It’s wrong, I’ve downloaded french movies of that period. They’re just liars

    • just_me

      if they mean French movies may be right, otherwise people still using torrent to download and share files there.

  • qox

    A lot of people seems to be missing the point here. That quote doesnt mean french movies suck, even though you seem to think it. It just means that the one saying it is either dumb or misinformed. Bad or not, the fact is french movies have a big success in theatres (and are downloded as well).

  • Acce

    I am an active member of a french torrent community and let me tell you that: you are right! No piracy at all in the last year I‘ve downloaded 500gb of…. family pictures and homes videos. No piracy though!

  • Maffiou

    It would be good to correlate this statement with the studio’s revenue… I expect it should have soared… If it hasn’t then, obviously, the conclusion is that piracy plays a part in promoting content for legal means of distribution… Buzz factor and so on… 

  • Anonymous

    lol that’s like saying like the sun isn’t yellow :D

  • Sarkozy

    So what was that .mkv file in French language I downloaded last september?
    Well, it cant have been a French movie, so I must have downloaded something else. Maybe I downloded a car?

  • Admiral Ackbar

    The French are wanting to keep out the copycops by releasing false data.

  • Huddel

    Well, let’s fix it. I’m not watching them, but downloading some to my seedbox won’t hurt ;D

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

    Id say that was more a sad inditement of the quality of french/gaumont films than the effectiveness of hadopi

  • jj

    Feel free to use his comments when faced with file sharing lawsuite

  • Guest

    Maybe because french movies suck?

  • Guest

    How do they know this?

    Also, I guess The Inbetweeners is a good UK example of this. It didn’t get pirated because the cinemas were such good at security as well as most of the UK population don’t know the definition of sharing and just download movies but never upload them, sad but true :(

  • http://twitter.com/Anime4PSP Anime 4 PSP

    wonder why they’re happy about it oO

  • Mwhahaha

    We should do our best to redress this clearly shocking piece of news. French Cinema needs our help!

  • DutchGuest

    That’s funny, because i downloaded Les rivières pourpres 1 and 2 in April, and i download C’est arrivé près de chez vous in January.

    And last i checked, those are french movies…

    • Anonymous

      And not between the months he specified…

  • agtrier

    This has to end. Let’s all D/L “Welcome to the Ch’tis” (it’s worth it! :-)

  • http://www.wraithtdk.com Matthew Young

    “Between 15 May and 15 December 2011, no French film has been downloaded from the Internet,” Seydoux claims.
    The internet: home to tubgirl, ass milk, goatse and two girls, one cup.

    Still can’t stomach French cinema.

  • buggy hair

    What a hoot reading these comments is. Can all you posters really not
    hear the sarcasm in Ernesto’s words?  Torrentfreak is mocking Nicolas Seydoux for making such absurd claims.

  • Anonymous

    Many People like the Cheap Louis Vuitton Bags very much and would consider that the Louis Vuitton Company come from In italy , in fact it is born from paris in France.So you unlidely see real Louis Vuitton Bags For Sale in other city except france. But please don’t worry about that ,if you want to buy a cheap louis vuitton items ,you could search the Louis Vuitton Online in the internet,you can get the cheap louis vuitton handbags anywhere.

  • Anonymous

    Beijing policy makers say they’re eager to encourage greater domestic consumption. Chinese shoppers are famously luxury-happy, flying to Hong Kong and further afield in droves to stock up on Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and more. All of which means the stage is set for the next great innovation to hit China: 
    Louis Vuitton Outlet malls.

  • FreeBSD

    THe French are probably using Retroshare, I2P, etc.

  • French_lover

    As a longtime French movie lover (and an American) I’ve got my hands on pretty every major French movie flick before, on and after the specified dates!
    So, long live Gaumont, LOL

  • Leland_fuller

    Between 15 May and 15 December 2011, no French film has been downloaded from the Internet,” Seydoux claims.

    Now that is what I call a lie.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

NewsBits

Even more news...

  • Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm on Freedom of Speech

    Freedom of speech is a highly valued commodity, but should people be allowed to say whatever...

  • Blu-ray Anti-Piracy Tech Stops Discs and Promotes Purchases

    An anti-piracy system present in all official Blu-ray players since 2012 has received a fresh update...

  • Foxtel Breeds Pirates by Locking Up Game of Thrones

    One of the main reasons why people turn to piracy is the lack of legal alternatives....

  • UK Student Admits Breaching Sony Copyrights With Leak of PS3 SDK

    Last year an Internet user known as El Nomeo leaked version 3.70 of Sony’s Playstation3 SDK...

  • Pirates Can Be Identified Despite Sharing IP Addresses, ISP Claims

    Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation is a network mechanism through which many Internet subscribers can share the...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

CopyQuote

Left Quote

“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.

Peter Sunde Left Quote

PopularArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.