French Farce: Hadopi's First And Only Suspension Has Been Suspended

from the ooh-la-la dept

Wed, Sep 11th 2013 10:39pm — Glyn Moody

Back in June we wrote about Hadopi's first and only successful disconnection case. As we also noted then, in the wake of its abject failure, Hadopi was being dramatically curtailed. In particular, disconnection is no longer available as a punishment for those alleged to have downloaded files without authorization.

That turns out to have a lucky consequence for the otherwise unlucky person sentenced to 15 days disconnection earlier this year. As the French Web site PC Inpact explains (original in French), before the disconnection could be carried out, the French law changed. And it is apparently an established principle in France that when milder measures are brought in for a given offense, those generally apply retroactively to anyone convicted under the previous, harsher regime. In this case, that means the suspension has been suspended.

So it looks like even that single, 15-day disconnection -- the only fruit of Sarkozy's beloved and costly "three strikes and you're out" idea -- will never happen. What a truly fitting end to a farcical experiment. The big question now is: what comes next?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: france, hadopi, three strikes

14 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

That Anonymous Coward (profile), 11 Sep 2013 @ 11:29pm

I get forgetful in my old age, but wasn't this victim of the system actually innocent and held liable for the actions of another anyways?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That One Guy (profile), 11 Sep 2013 @ 11:52pm
  
  Re:
  Indeed, I believe his ex-wife was the one who was actually responsible, and even admitted to it(so apparently the divorce wasn't that bad), but they still went after him anyway, probably so they could have at least one person they could point to as having been 'caught' by the program, innocence be damned.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 12:14am
    
    Re: Re:
    Shame we can't apply that rule to the cartel membership.
    Well this trailer was rented to the star by one of your subdivisions, so your going to jail for the hooker and the blow we found inside.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Sep 2013 @ 1:52am

and dont forget, it is against EU Law to disconnect anyone from the Internet, so i doubt if France would have done so anyway. if they had, i would say there would have been some pretty severe repercussions!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Sep 2013 @ 2:16am

average_joe and out_of_the_blue just hate it when due process is enforced.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ninja (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 4:49am

Well, at least Sarkozy succeeded epically in failing epically. I remember back when HADOPI came in on TorrentFreak there were some trolls saying that "the days of the Internet wild west were coming to an end". The trolls have changed from that time but I'd love to see their faces years after and without any real change to the sharing community ;)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 5:29am
  
  Re:
  One has to remember this happened even after it was shown that Sarkozy was a repeat copyright infringer.
  Its bad when you all do it, but not me...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Ninja (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 6:05am
    
    Re: Re:
    Hah! I remember that article. It's so damn easy to infringe copyrights nowadays without even noticing...
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Alan Simpson, 12 Sep 2013 @ 5:34am

What comes next
What comes next is the "Whitelist". You can only go where we tell you, you can. "For the Children".

Trial balloon being floated in Russia as we speak.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Sep 2013 @ 8:47am

OK, someone help me out here...
As I understand it, HADOPI had basically three stages:

1. you get an email telling you to stop, or you'll get a certified letter
2. you get a certified letter telling you to stop or you'll be disconnected
3. you get disconnected.

So, um.. what's step 3 replaced with? "Someone sends you a singing telegram asking you to stop, or you'll get a parade telling you to stop?"

disconnection is no longer available as a punishment
Considering disconnection was the only punishment, what are they replacing it with?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Rikuo (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 10:44am
  
  Re: OK, someone help me out here...
  As far as I know, nothing. The disconnection punishment clashed with an EU law, last I checked, that says you can't lose your Internet connection as a court-ordered punishment. So as far as I understand, it's just going to be letters, at least for a while, until HADOPI is completely scrapped.
  I hope, but do not expect at all, that instead of this stick approach, the copyright cartels try a carrot. After all, if my net access is cut off, I can't buy anything over the Internet, no Netflix, no Hulu, nothing on Amazon, no Spotify, no Steam, no Origin, etc. I'm not going to go to the coffee shop down the road and use their Wi-fi to buy something, I'm not going to trust my credit card details or Paypal login on their network. I could use a VPN, but again, if I were disconnected at home, my yearly/monthly subscription would be basically worthless to me, in that I couldn't use it.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- RonKaminsky (profile), 12 Sep 2013 @ 12:10pm
  
  Re: OK, someone help me out here...
  If I remember correctly, before (3) happens, you get hauled into some kind of "court" (but maybe more like a review board), and they have to decide to disconnect you. The guy who was found responsible for his wife's infringements was also fined 150 euros if I remember correctly.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
nsalookup, 13 Sep 2013 @ 3:17am

What come Next ?
Here in France, what is coming next will be a censorship of websites and France will make hosting providers responsible for the content they host. Hadopi will also be merged with the CSA that has authorities, till now, in the TV Market only. For exemple, but not at least, the CSA decides what programm/ad... is for -16, -18, -12... The CSA will have some new authorities in Internet so, and that's what we are afraid of, and even if from now on, all we know, it is that it will be merged, we don't really know (but soon) what will be this farcing new decade, but surely, it will not be joy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- nsalookup, 13 Sep 2013 @ 4:04am
  
  Re: What come Next ?
  Last minute changes. We will have to wait till 2014 to know what hadopi will become. Members of parliament from presidential majority are not for that controversal project and it has been canceled for this time.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]