French legislators have second thoughts on three strikes law. Are the French legislators who passed the country's tough new "three strikes" Internet disconnection law having second thoughts?
Le Figaro caught up last week with Jean-François Copé, a leading member of the ruling right-leaning UMP party that wrote and supported the "Création et Internet" law passed last year. Copé helped rally support for the bill after it failed its first vote in the National Assembly because most UMP deputies had actually left the chamber without voting.
Copé told the paper that he "knew and perceived the weaknesses" of the law before it was passed, confessed that the choice of wording in the law was "maladroit," and issued "un petit mea culpa" for the way the law turned out. "I have evolved a bit on this issue," he added. Copé isn't alone among UMP deputies in backing away from the law's harsher elements, which (along with other laws like LOPSSI 2, an Internet security law) have given many young voters in France the idea that UMP hates the Internet. Piracy up in France after tough three-strikes law passed. France's toughest-in-the-world Internet disconnection law has yet to start cutting off P2P pirates, but the "Hadopi" law has been on the books long enough to see how its provisions are altering behavior.
According to a team of French researchers, online copyright infringement is down on P2P networks—but it's up in areas that the law doesn't cover, such as online streaming and one-click download services like Rapidshare. In fact, since the law was passed, total infringing behavior has actually increased by three percent. Whack that mole Researchers affiliated with the University of Rennes in France's Brittany region have just released a paper (French PDF) based on 2,000 phone surveys with Brittany residents. The survey found that 15 percent of P2P users have already stopped using such networks, even though Hadopi has yet to start sending out its warning letters and disconnection notices. Good news for rightsholders?
Data source: M@rsouin; CREM; Universite de Rennes 1. Record industry: ignore that French piracy study! A few days back, we highlighted a new study out of France that found piracy actually going up after the country passed a strict Internet disconnection law. Though the law won't be implemented until later in the year, les internautes are already moving away from P2P networks; the thing is, even more of them are moving to other forms of piracy not dealt with by the new law, like online streaming and one-click downloads.
The recording industry's international trade group, IFPI, didn't think much of this research from the University of Rennes. IFPI CEO John Kennedy blasted the study: "It is nonsense to suggest that a study conducted before the [new] HADOPI authority has sent a letter to a single infringing user is somehow a definitive judgment on the success or otherwise of France's digital piracy laws. " Data source: M@rsouin; CREM; Universite de Rennes 1 Neither the original research paper nor our article claimed that this was "somehow a definitive judgment. "