Anti-Piracy Association: File Sharing Represents the End of Film Industry

The Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA), a French antipiracy firm, claims that illegal downloads in France are becoming a immense danger that could lead to a disastrous outcome - the sinking of the film industry.

ALPA investigated P2P traffic in France between November 2007 and June 2008 and came up with results that made it think the p2p phenomenon may put the entire film industry out of business. According to the organization, after monitoring 100 of the most popular movies (both French and foreign) on peer-to-peer networks during the time period mentioned above it learned that these productions constituted about 90 percent of all P2P downloads. ALPA reported a daily average of 450,000 downloads (in December, it was 536,000 per day), and a monthly average that exceeded 14 million downloads.

Here’s an example of some results ALPA gave the AFP – it said that French film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis reached an average 9,800 downloads per day following its box office release in March and since then it has accumulated 682,000 downloads. The figure is high, of course, but if we take a look at the number of box office tickets sold in France - 20 million, then the prediction that the film industry will collapse seems rather exaggerated.

That's a lot of downloads, but compared to the 20 million box office tickets the film has sold in France, we would hesitate to say that the box office is going to be closing down anytime soon.

ALPA director Frederic Delacroix didn’t hesitate to name the solution to this problem – an anti-piracy plan, that has the support of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, which would mean the disconnection from the Internet for repeat infringers (the notorious "three-strikes" rule) and would have ISPs rigorously monitor their networks for traffic of copyright material.