France: 25,000 families a day at risk of losing Internet access

France's HADOPI administrator (which processes copyright accusations against Internet users) is now receiving 25,000 complaints a day. A family whose household attracts three unsubstantiated complaints is disconnected from the Internet for a year. Meanwhile, use of non-P2P downloading sites to get access to infringing copies is way up.

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linguistbreaker

They are only hurting themselves – much like the current labor and retirement age protests. If France can’t move forward with changing times they will continue to fall behind and may end up a third world step-child of Europe.
- zeh
  
  If France can’t move *backward* with changing times they will continue to fall behind and may end up a third world step-child of Europe.
  
  There. Fixed it for you. Sort of.
- Boba Fett Diop
  
  Have you ever been to France? I’ve lived in both France and the US, and I can tell you which one is starting to look more like a 3rd World country.
- mdh
  
  oh, that old saw? zzzzzzzzzz.
  
  If it makes you feel good to repeat that, do, but expect to be disagreed with, as you are wrong.
Anonymous

How long until french people start taking some allegations of illegal downloads to the ones who came up with this crap and voted for it?

I don’t know who can make accusations but even if you need to be some kind of a record company… who isn’t one these days, anyway? The Pirate parties or the EFF should take this up.
- loutr
  
  The UMP keeps on ripping off other people’s work, be it music (MGMT’s Kids for a convention, and a shitty song for that dumb lipdub), fonts (for the HADOPI logo), photos (on the blogs of majors backers of the law), … They just shrug it off every time, saying they didn’t know how copyright works, or that it’s not that important. Talk about double standards…
Modusoperandi

The solution is simple. Call the hotline and give them the names of those behind HADOPI.
SamSam

Who can call in these “unsubstantiated claims?” Would it be too hard to call and pretend to be Mr. Bigglesbury, CEO of Evil RIAA Record Label and get some high-profile people knocked off the web for a year?
Anonymous

In the US we have millions of people who risk losing internet access every day without doing anything at all wrong. We call them Comcast customers.
Anonymous

Sarkozy and his cabinet don’t have a braincell between them. The fact that he bought this policy in(no doubt his wife forced the policy for some reason. She’s only good for selling her looks to famous and rich guys so no idea why she thinks anybody would download her music) is testament to their stupidity. What did they think would happen if they passed that law?

I hope the French get rid of Sarkozy. The man is an idiot and his powertrip is hurting that nation in a number of ways. The French certainly seem to see that with these protests and his approval ratings making him the most disliked president in French history. They should bring back Chirac.
- Anonymous
  
  Agree mostly, but Chirac?
- Pantograph
  
  I find it sad that with all the disgusting things Sarko has done, the only thing that really brings out the strikes and burning barricades is the (in my opinion reasonable and neccessary) raising of the age of retirement by two years.
  - zeh
    
    If you listen to what people protesting in the streets actually say, it is precisely that it is not just about the retirement age law and that they’re mad about the austerity plan ripoff, fed up with the robbery to shore up the rising bank profits.
Zac

I wonder how far all this IP malarky will go. Will all of these media companies finally push people too far, creating massive anger and forcing governments to deal with intellectual property rights in a sane and responsible way? Or will consumers just slowly lose more and more rights every year while art and culture becomes more and more stagnant as it is locked down by greedy corporations?

If we’re lucky maybe global warming will kill us all first.
scdevine

I suppose writing a script that accuses each citizen of France of internet piracy three times is something we’re going to have to leave to the 4chan Mob? Darn this seductive Boing Boing Hipster community atmosphere!
efergus3

‘Kay – now’s the time to send in complaints against everyone who voted for this crap. And everyone who is enforcing it. After all, they don’t have to be proven.