Since Three Strikes Went Into Effect, Unauthorized File Trading Has Increased In France
from the nice-work dept
While I don't believe that the new Hadopi "three strikes" law in France has started being enforced yet (due to data privacy questions), it technically went into effect at the beginning of the year, and was widely promoted around France. Of course, our big question was why anyone thought that such laws would actually make anyone buy. The general reasoning that supporters of such laws gave is that it would decrease unauthorized file trading, and those people would magically want to start buying again. But, of course, as mentioned at the time, we already have empirical data that this wouldn't work. After all, here in the US, thousands of people were threatened with millions of dollars in fines for file sharing -- a punishment significantly more stringent than losing your internet connection. And, rather than decrease the amount of unauthorized file trading, it only increased (quite a bit), often moving to more underground resources.So it should come as little (i.e., no) surprise that in the few months since the Hadopi law has technically been in effect in France, reports have found an increase in unauthorized file trading, along with a notable shift from BitTorrent to other, less trackable, solutions.
So what's next? Suing doesn't work. Kicking people off the internet doesn't work. Can we hope that maybe next on the list is actually putting in place a good business model?
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Filed Under: france, three strikes
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*sigh*
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A (hopefully simple) question
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Others?
What other solutions? Why am I so far behind the times?
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Re: A (hopefully simple) question
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Re: A (hopefully simple) question
File Trading isn't really a term that's used too much, I don't think, but I assume Mike was using it to describe non-P2P methods for getting files illegally.
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Re: Others?
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um file trading
is that me walking over to your house with 5 TB drives and then SHARING
whether its online or off the term should be sharing. I GIVE to you freely whether you give back or not is up to you.
THAT'S what sharing is, trading implies you have to give something to get something
and everything starts somewhere with someone and thats the real start of the share. THE trade aspect of p2p is to make it fair so more people can enjoy and such.
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Re: Others?
However, most Torrents die down after a month or two, with few seeders maintaining the download. If you want some longevity in your file hosting, the best place presently is probably free services like RapidShare (I know, shocking, isn't it?) which have free upload/download limits of 200mb per file and download speeds of 100kbps (usually). Throw in some workaround programs like JDownloader, and you can get 800mb files with almost no hassle whatsoever.
...uh...for perfectly legitimate reasons, that is. You'd never want to use any of these things for illegal things, of course.
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Nope. Next is legislating a compulsory chip in your brain that will erase movies and music from your memory after having seen them, closing the "analog hole" for good.
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Re: Re: Others?
P2P and bit torrent over VPN, Direct Connect, sneaker net (sharing data via USB sticks and hard drive swaps), Megaupload and Rapidshare (cyberlockers), streaming services, etc
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Re:
"Boo!"
"...Lobotomies for some, tiny American flags for others!"
"Yay!"
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and we already know what will happen here in north america
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Re:
That's right. The "business saving" legislation that took years of lobbying and political buyouts doesn't actually do anything. Hilarious, eh?
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Sure. They rush to download the internets before they are diconnected. ;-)
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Old system: You share files and hope you don't get sued.
New system: You share files and know when you'll get sued because they'll send you 2 warning letters first.
Imagine if schools went from "zero tolerance" on drugs to
"three strikes". Of course drug use would go up, because everyone got 2 freebies.
Foolish, really, to think it would have any effect at all except this one.
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Re: Re: Re:
No one has said that Hadopi law has caused an increase in illegal downloading. Only that it has yet to do anything that it's supposed to do.
Reading comprehension. It's a good thing.
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That might be the dumbest comment I've read today.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Tell me, what did stop you from shooting up heroin at high school?
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If you get warnings, they're effectively forcing you to either stop (as if), or to find ways to better hide yourself.
They're educating people, alright!
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Re: Re: Re: Others?
I was hoping there was a new technology out there. Not something that's a step or two backwards.
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Ewww ewww I know
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Re: Seppuku
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Piracy
The only way to fix the problem is to acknowledge the reasons why so many people - otherwise law abiding citizens - do partake in this illegal activity. Part of the problem is anti-piracy campaigns that equate minor copyright infringement to large scale operations - the issue is more complex - this grandstanding is rejected by most people.
There are many good arguments for a better business model that meets consumer needs so that they don't feel the need to infringe copyright. Capitalists with large mark ups often cite that they are priced according to market demand - what the market is willing to pay. Conversly, the file sharing movement is a sure sign that in fact many are questioning those prices and, without a middleground option, will take it for free rather than pay too much.
At other times people download what they can't get through normal routes. Films are not always distributed to every country or every town - or at all. Once upon a time a 'bootleg' would find it's way from person to person, but you had to be in the know. Now things get uploaded online instead. E.g. American Boy was a bootleg that inspired many filmmakers including Tarentino. When a later doc was made wanting to use clips from this (american prince) the best quality footage was not the director's copy but rather the Youtube version.
Looking at file sharing in black and white legal terms allows no agreement between sides - instead we need to examine which situations where ethics and law are at odds and modify the law so that only the unethical cases are illegal.
I have a series of posts examining this issue in greater detail on my blog if you are interested - I welcome comments.
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Re: Piracy
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Risk-free downloading
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Re:
Political grand standing on the peoples behalf. People changing to an ISP that looks the other way. Better more anonymous methods of transfering files. People feeling more secure about downloading because of the new anonymity. People reading the news and asking what is this file sharing thing, then finding the wonderful world of P2P, bit torrent, weblockers, streaming video, etc.
All in all its a no win situation for the labels and studios. It will eventually escalate to infringing being a criminal offense, with people going to jail and will do no good. The studios like the labels are going have to adapt or fail as viable businesses.
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First reason is, now the government is talking about it, so people get more interested in it, and now methods of piracy better knows and easier to find...
But the biggest problem is, they flash solely based on the IP address, which can be faked, and we'll probably get some 85 years old grandma getting one, then two warnings about piracy...
And it gets better: if it turns out you did not download anything, then someone must have used your connection, and you can pay over 1000 euros fine because it's your fault you did not secure your connection....
Added to the fact that, if they do follow with their theoretical 10 000 warnings per day, judges who will pronounce the decision of whether to cut, or give a fine, or check if the person is really not guilty, have 5 minutes to deliberate...
As for the reasons of piracy, those mentioned were good, just add the teenager with little pocket money who still wishes to listen to his favorite artists and watch his favorite movies... he buys what he can, and when he cannot, he watches online for free..
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