For years, France's adoption of the so-called graduated response for dealing with illicit file-sharing has been trumpeted by entertainment companies as a success story to be replicated around the globe. The only true barometer of success, however, is the sound of cash leaving customers' pockets and into those of the…
This week the controversial French three-strikes anti-piracy law Hadopi went live. Copyright holders are currently in the process of sending out tens of thousands of IP-addresses of alleged infringers to Internet service providers, and this will increase to over a million in a few weeks. The ISPs have to hand…
This week, the French authority Hadopi issued its first order of disconnecting the net for a person who shared culture and knowledge. Hadopi's behavior is completely illegal. In 2009, the European Parliament made such disconnections unquestionably and explicitly illegal.
A statement by French Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti spells bad and possibly fatal news for the country's "three strikes" anti-piracy scheme. The Minister said that not only is the cost of running Hadopi too great to justify, but the agency has failed to deliver when it comes to developing the…