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French government claims Hadopi is working
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 17 May 2011
A report by the French government claims that the three-strikes anti-piracy system that went live there last year is starting to have an impact, with half of 1500 people surveyed saying the new copyright protection initiative had encouraged them to use legal content services, and 72% of those who knew someone who had received a warning letter as part of the three-strikes process saying they had stopped or dramatically reduced their use of file-sharing networks.
France was one of the first countries to introduce a three-strikes system to combat online piracy, with all out disconnection from the internet the ultimate penalty in the ‘graduate response’ process managed by a government agency called Hadopi. Since it first appeared on the political agenda, French media reports have said there is a lot of opposition among the public to the anti-piracy measures, though the government’s report claims half of those questioned supported the initiative.
According to reports, the Hadopi office is now sending out 5000 warning letters a day to suspected file-sharers, with the second-strike letters starting to go out in January. Some in the French media last week questioned the reliability of the government’s poll, while others have claimed that the use of less detectable file-sharing methods – including device-to-device offline sharing – are on the up in the country, counterbalancing any stats that suggest traditional file-sharing is down.
