Digital Top Stories

French study questions impact trois-strikes will really have

By | Published on Friday 19 March 2010

A study in France has shown that plans to introduce a three-strikes system to combat online piracy there have, so far, had little affect on file-sharing levels in the country.

The report also says that French file-sharers are starting to access illegal sources of music using methods other that P2P networks, piracy which France’s three-strikes system is arguably not equipped to tackle.

As much previously reported, the French parliament passed a three-strikes system into law last year, and a new government agency called Hadopi is currently setting it all up, though the system is not yet active, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it has yet to have any real impact on file-sharing levels in France.

Though researchers at Rennes University wondered if the high profile media coverage of three-strikes becoming law might have, in itself, had an impact. But only 15% of the 2000 people they interviewed said they had made any change to the way they access music online since the three-strikes system – which in France could result in all out disconnection of net access – had been passed by the country’s political types.

The research also shows that there has been an increase in the number of people accessing music illegally via online services other than traditional P2P file-sharing networks.

This includes using unlicensed streaming services (there’s one popular one called Allostreaming.com), or searching for MP3 files that have been illegally uploaded to legitimate file-exchange websites like Rapidshare or Megaupload. Of the 15% of people who have changed the way they access music online, two thirds had moved from traditional P2P networks to these other methods.

The file-sharing tracking systems used by record companies, which initiate any three-strikes action, currently only track P2P activity. Meanwhile the liabilities for infringement of individuals who access unlicensed streaming services are much less well defined in copyright law. These shifts to other forms of online piracy, therefore, arguably make three-strikes ineffective.

Of course it is with this in mind that UK record label trade body the BPI has been so keen to ensure there is a clause in the copyright section of the Digital Economy Bill which makes it easier to shut down illegal streaming services, or to force the likes of Rapidshare to monitor files uploaded to its system for possible infringement. Those attempts, though, have proven even more controversial than the original three-strikes proposals.



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