French Anti-Piracy Law Doomed to Fail
Written by enigmax on April 08, 2009Despite plenty of protests, the French Parliament passed a controversial new law last week that will see alleged copyright infringers disconnected from the Internet. Now, a new survey reveals that 60% of French Internet users are against the so-called HADOPI law. 69% say they believe it will fail.
The new legislation passed in France last week requiring ISPs to cut off the Internet access of alleged copyright infringers has never been popular with anyone outside of the government and entertainment industries.
The new ‘HADOPI’ (Creation and Internet) law introduces unlimited options for copyright holders to go after individuals and sites that are alleged to have infringed copyright, without having to actually prove that the accused are categorically guilty. Now, a new survey by French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) for LeJdd shows just how (un)popular this so-called ‘graduated response’ is with the public.
From a survey of 1004 individuals representative of the French Internet user, 60% of respondents said they were not in favor of the law (42% were strongly against), with a third saying they support it “somewhat”. Only those respondents over 65 years old showed greater support, with 53% in favor and 41% against. Despite this, 64% of the respondents in this category felt that the graduated response wont be affective at all.
Interestingly, there was no difference between the different age groups in the expected effectiveness of the new anti-piracy legislation. Overall, the majority responded quite negatively. Just 24% of respondents said that they felt the ‘graduated response’ would be “very” or “somewhat” effective, with a huge 69% believing it will fail.
As in most countries, illegal file-sharing is widespread in France. One in four of the respondents admitted that they downloaded copyrighted music or movies regularly. There is a clear generation gap here, as 40% of those younger than 30 years categorized themselves as active downloaders opposed to 6% in the 65 years and older group.
Not not everyone is sceptical of the scheme. While repeating the IFPI nonsense that 95% of all music is pirated, U2 manager Paul McGuiness writes that not only is the Creation and Internet law “the right solution to an enormous problem” but also “a fair and balanced solution” that “will work in practice.”
Clearly not everyone agrees. The full survey is available in French here (.pdf)
Previously: Facebook Blocks All Pirate Bay Links
Next: France Rejects 3 Strikes Anti-Piracy Law
69 Responses
This isn’t an indication the law is failing. We knew that before it was even implemented.
This is just the public stating how much they hate it.
U2 = crap music.
Good I hope it does fail!
“Not not everyone”?
Please fix typo.
U2 are hippocrites themselves… having most off their assets offshore to avoid taxes… and they say that filesharing is wrong while Bono just protrais himself as modern-day jesus… laughable.
Bono is a dirty slut.
a survey is a complete waste of time. a dedicated vote, for or against, is the only real option. until the people are allowed to voice their disgust and opinion, nothing will change. nor will the government officials change their minds while they are having their palms greased by the music and movie industries, even when they know the bill is wrong.
i thought that there was a law in france that said that if something is copyrighted is based in a tax haven they can be downloaded legally irrespective the the 3 strikes – U2 being such an example
Yes, I’m a douche bag :/
i’d be interested in seeing a detailed description of exactly who is going to be permitted access to my internet traffic and behavior, and how they will be be able to decrypt it.
And I’d be very interested in a tutorial for french Mac users, how to evade this specific law.
@9
ROFL. :D
i second the first one
and by the way … wut kinda crappy law is it… 3 times someone imagines you dled mp3 file and off with your head??? …
lets imagine am sending my friends a copy of a homework it is about 4mb big zipped and passworded and encrypted… and named S.O.S. now someone notices you sharing it over bittorent due to public tracker you all use and confuses it with Kofi Kingston’s S.O.S. and reports you… dat is 1st time???
sounds kidna similar to oe law someone tried to pull in russia to arrest and jail people for 25 years for having even a gram of cocaine without a trial… i don’t see this “law” even lawly then… if i’m missing something i’m sorry
French People have quite a history of rising up against thier leaders when they get out of sync with the people. I predict we will see some upturned flaming citroens in the near future.
“Is it a rebellion?” asked Louis XVI of the count who informed him of the fall of the Bastille.
“No, sire,” came the reply. “It is a revolution.”
this law will fail: realy easy to avoid.
this law is based on a report made by someone who come from entertainment industries. who said lobby ? no… every arguments are perfectly logic and Objective…
now, because of this not-democratic process, i considere piracy as a duty.
thank you monsieur sarkozy, it will be fun /-)
(a french internet user)
We’ve been making the same album for 20 years you fokkers !
We’re the ONLY ones allowed to copy our music !!!!
Just make me richer and shut the feck up !!!
@13 Sorry but the only people who vote are old and they dont care about file sharing. Nobody is going to rebel because nobody cares.
“the right solution to an enormous problem” – The problem is with the music industry, not with the people as consumers.
“a fair and balanced solution” – No.
“will work in practice.” – Probably not.
It’s completely uninforcible. Can you imagine what even one minute’s worth of IP data in a country the size of France’s looks like? Even with the best packet sniffing and data mining tools the policing authorities would be so swamped with leads that they could never catch up. My advice to our French friends? Download hard & fast.
However, I have not heard of any Pirate Party or pro-Pirate non-governmental organization like the Piratbyran, as there is in Sweden. The only way that Pirates can influence government policies is to act in unison. After all, surely there is nothing that any single pirate can do to influence government policy. Pirates of the world, unite!
“Piracy” can’t be stopped.
@16 they plan to send out about 30 000 emails, 10 000 letters and disconnect about 1 000 internet users per day. some people will care.
Finally, something to cheer me up in the recent semi-fascist gloom.
It seems like governments all over are getting increasingly deaf to the voice of their citizens, while being happy to accept anyone with a neat enough suit and a nice enough vocabulary as “unpartial advisor” in whatever the subject. The only things that matter, I suppose, are election results. So let’s set sight on changing those.
@enigmax
Thanks for this post, Hadopi has a very bad coverage in english :-)
@the.dwarfer
“French People have quite a history of rising up against thier leaders when they get out of sync with the people. I predict we will see some upturned flaming citroens in the near future.”
It will take some time, but you can count on that, either online or IRL ;-)
@supermee
“i considere piracy as a duty. thank you monsieur sarkozy, it will be fun /-)”
I like your spirit man /-)
@www.10ch.org
“I have not heard of any Pirate Party or pro-Pirate non-governmental organization like the Piratbyran”
Check this out: http://reseaudespirates.org/
@philipb
Actualy, it’s a little more triky: the law will have a lot of innocent victims, and the only way to avoid being one will be to install a spyware on your computer, reporting your every move to the government.
Yes, sounds like a nightmare, but check the law’s details, this is the ugly thruth. 1984 in 2009 :-(
@16 Apparently, when the Swedish Pirate Party were handing out flyers in Luleå the other day, many people said “Sorry, politics doesn’t interest me — wait, you’re from the Pirate Party?” and suddenly politics was very interesting.
The problem is obviously not a lack of political interest, it’s a lack of interesting political options.
1) They can’t survey every possible file that you share, they will survey the most “pirated” ones
2) They can’t survey every one at the same time
3) They can’t filter encrypted traffic or VPNs
How to spend about 100M € (at least) in internet surveillance for nothing (instead of using it to help new artists).
I want my money back. And optical fiber connexion with symmetric bandwidth.
U2’s McGuiness – “the right solution to an enormous problem” but also “a fair and balanced solution” that “will work in practice.”
Fail, right there.
Betcha he’s got one “Stolen” track in his “Collection Problem” that won’t stop him “fairly” (failey was typoed 1st..) checking out his competitors in “Pratice”.
Of course it will fail. In France, we hae something called the “Conseil Constitutionnel” which validates that a law respects our constitution. Clearly this one doesn’t, wo it won’t pass.
I’m betting HADOPI gets repealed before April is out.
The Pirate Bay victory’s on the 17th won’t just pressure the Swedish government and IPRED, it’s going to pressure the French government, too.
“WORLD’S MOST INFAMOUS TORRENT SITE FOUND NOT GUILTY” is a headline that will make waves around the globe. It’s going to call all these draconian anti-sharing laws into a level of scrutiny we’ve never seen before. HADOPI & IPRED will be first on the chopping block. If they even survive that long.
i always did like the history lessons about France…do you guys still have guillotines? i heard a guy in Britain sells them
It’s very easy to get these politician’s attention. Wait for the law to pass and let the citizens start turning them in for alleged copyright infringement. When they get their internet cut off, the eyes will open.
After all, you just have to accuse, you don’t have to prove it…
U2 manager Paul McGuiness says “a fair and balanced solution” that “will work in practice.”
Just because you say something is fair and balanced doesn’t make it so. You also say that U2’s music is good, and that doesn’t make it true, right?
well, lets let time predict what the outcomes will be. That’s a scary thing, but its… sadly the best we can do… right?
All these laws are easy to solve, if people lose their service based on accusations then everyone just needs to accuse away.
baseless accusations against the ISP’s customer bases and against the politicians will remind people why we used to use evidence to decide guilt
what will they do when one fourth of France is disconnected ? internet service providers wont break-even. Its a loose-loose situation. Everyone one will get back to the old fashionned disk copying.
btw, not everyone would agree that u2 music is worth something…
#33: Good idea.
Start with the right-wing politicians.
This is hilarious. In the current financial climate, are french ISP’s really going to lose a huge proportion of their customers adding up to millions of euros by disconnecting them?? I think not.
@supermee: Lobbies are illegal in France.
The article doesn’t explain why it will fail.
@Comment Bot
Ohh yes it does.
It mention’s Bono in it.
^^Oops, U2 even………garrh fail..
Nothing will come of this law whatsoever…well VPN providers will probably see a huge increase in profits from France. When knowledgeable people actually try to preserve their anonymity, it becomes very expensive (even for western governments) to track them down.
I predict that when this fails, they will attempt to pass laws to keep us from protecting our privacy. Some mainstream VPN services are already far to willing to hand over their logs to just anyone who makes a formal request (not even proper authorities).
I recommend using IPREDATOR:
http://ipredator.se/
For 60 EUR per year, you gain peace of mind and support TPB (I’d rather support my private trackers personally, but supporting TBP is still cool).
The law has just been rejected by the French parliament ! Looks like our future will be bright after all…
this is “A” typical of governments around the world they will implement laws years before they intend to enforce them. then when they do they will say to the judge this law has been in place for years they should have known…
the world order isnt coming… its already here!!!
“As in most countries, illegal file-sharing is widespread in France.”
Come on! All one can know for sure is “file-sharing” is widespread in France.
The Hadopi/anti-piracy law was rejected by the parliament today, just about 40 minutes ago.
If you can read french (or google translate), more infos here:
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/12594-URGENT-le-Parlement-rejette-la-loi-Creation-et-Internet-MAJ.html
or
http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/high-tech/0,,4356512,00-l-assemblee-rejette-le-projet-de-loi-hadopi-.html
The law Hadopi failed today !
The French parliement reject it :D
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/12594-URGENT-le-Parlement-rejette-la-loi-Creation-et-Internet-MAJ.html (fr)
@Magic-Micky
Vive la France!
there should be a 3 strikes of making crap music and then your fired..
initially, the lobbyists wanted the names of the caught users to be published in the newspapers.
Who said inquisition ?
NOBODY EXPECTS THE MAJORISH INQUISITION!!
Indeed, today the “national assembly” voted the law nil and void. German report with details:
http://futurezone.orf.at/stories/1602192/
But the law could be reinstated for a voting in the near future, however that would be very unlikely due to shrinking support even within the UMP (and the complete “Center party” against it) and formal issues (hasn’t happen in the last 12 years).
Failed
The law just got rejected. Epic win.
http://www.ecrans.fr/L-Assemblee-Nationale-rejette-le,6910.html (in French)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/12596-Karoutchi-34Ce-texte-Hadopi-sera-de-toute-maniere-bien-sur-vote34.html
Arf! Our governement doesn’t like the geek!!
What we should do is all make music, get it copyrighted, and then call out every government group/corporation for downloading it illegally. That would easily take care of that problem, especially since you don’t have to prove that they actually did it.
suppose that someone connects to your wireless network puts up a warez website or something and e-mails some big industry guy to make fun of him, then you lose your e-connection while you did nothing rong
http://www.imagefreehost.com/files/09042009/xa48141796780.jpeg
good day for freedom
send the the haters to hell give them all conviction notice’s. may they be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Old hitter would be proud of these buggers. Well done french now to get rid of lanky git president and his prostitute wife
Viva La Revolution
@51 Marsellus
Thanks for the heads up!!!
But if your English, check out googles translation for the link
http://snipurl.com/fk86e
….”The government is now in the cabbage.” made me lol
The funny thing with the epic fail in France:
The French National Assembly has 600 politicians and only 36 (21 for, 15 against) have shown up????
Is that how laws are made in France?
Brothers and sisters in France: next time remember to not vote for lazy bastards that won’t show up at work! You pay for their monthly checks after all…
Ooopps, that should have been 21 against and 15 for, luckily, the math is still valid :-D
FUCK THEM RIGHT !
CRISTINE ALBANEL DESERVE TO BURN !
Awesome news that this has been rejected.
Just wanted to put in this though. The biggest problem with these kinds of laws is how easy it is to be pinged as pirating copyrighted material, without even seeing the files your apparently downloading/sharing.
See http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/ for more details, has a very interesting paper entitled “Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks –or– Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice”
Like there was anyone there to vote the patriot act in. And they didnt check the fucking bill.’
Not saying you’re an american.
But france had a good thing going for the longest time in human history. Remember the revolution.
i did readin till 28… are you even sure someone will talka bout it in press? or radio…or TV? yeah it will be big news to officials but in France Uk USa Germany and so on best it will get will be midle of the page on some big newspaper and just mentioned along with small article… now if companies win it will be enws even in ancient egypt if they can press it there :P
@Jeremy: that’s not the point. the report has been made by somebody who’s not objectiv.
others: roflmao, epic fail. that’s the kind of things that can only hapend in my contry. XD
“the right solution to an enormous problem”
The right solution to this enormous problem is a couple of Jdam bombs on the Vivendique Universale Head Quarter.
We are taking off Now.
Roger.
“But france had a good thing going for the longest time in human history. Remember the revolution.”
And the Camember president that stink almost as much as Sarkozy.
“The article doesn’t explain why it will fail.”
Because to enforce a law you need a consensus and there is no consensus.
People obey the law because they agree to it not because they have to.
Moreover very efficient evading technologies are there waiting for a privacy violating law such as ADOPI to proliferate.
Do not support U2 and their fallacies. Don’t even download their albums.
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