HADOPI Gives the “Go” to French Three Strikes Law

Late last year France adopted the controversial three strikes model much to the joy of the entertainment industry and the discontent of advocates of human rights. However, the green light for imposing the law was given by HADOPI (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet) only yesterday.

Perhaps even a greater impact will have the news that a number of companies in the music industry (SACEM, SDRM, SPPF and SCPP) and film industry (ALPA)are now legally allowed to collect IP addresses.

Here’s part of the decree as published by Zeropaid (Google translation):

The Google translation of the decree says, “The High Authority is now in a state begin its work. it determine the appropriate time to send the mail early warnings to offenders, based on referrals received from the rights holders.”

The decree goes on saying “The graduated response mechanism implemented by the Highest authority opens a pedagogy of responsibility on Internet. The user who is guilty of acts of infringement on the Internet incurs heavy penalties. Intake fundamental flexible response is to provide a device alternative, less heavily punished, leaving its place to teaching and explanation”

This basically means people should expect warning letters with copyright infringement accusations. They plan to move Internet users to authorized sources and those who fail to do so will face harsh penalties.

The main flaw of the system was never removed – the person accused of copyright infringement is guilty upon accusation and it’s his/her job to prove their innocence. This basically violates human rights as we know them.

This is what happens in a system that took the wrong turn right from the start since tracing an IP address does not mean it will direct you to the person who actually committed the copyright infringement act. It is not possible to link an IP address to an individual especially in the case of a household of people or when that household used Wi-Fi which could have been hacked.

These are only a few of the problems the implementation of the three strikes law ignores and probably how it will deal with them in a concrete manner we’re bound to find out in the near future.