14 DAY TRIAL // A three-strike piracy law from France can easily leave 60 internauts without an internet connection for a month because they've failed to take the warnings about sharing copyrighted materials seriously.
According to Torrent Freak, in January 2010, a company named Hadopi was put in charge by the authorities to seek out all the users who share content that doesn't belong to them. In the first few months after the law was properly regulated 471,000 people were served a first warning.
Not everyone took the message seriously and soon after they received a second strike. By now, more than 650,000 ISP account holders have received a first warning which reads something like "Attention, your Internet connection has been used to commit acts that could constitute a breach of the law," also adding that piracy "is a serious threat to the economy of the cultural sector."
After the final numbers came in, it seems that by September this year there were 44,000 internauts who were one step away from losing their web connection, which means that not everyone took the advice seriously.
The report also shows that 60 people have already been blacklisted, waiting for a judge to give out the sentence which could consist in a €1500 ($2000) fine and the deprivation of an internet link for up to a month.
Copyright is a delicate matter and as we've seen lately, in many countries regulations are put together in order to put a stop to the criminal phenomenon. Recently we've witnessed German Chairman Siegfried Kauder's attempt to adopt some sort of regulation that turned on him, making the world see that it's not as easy as it looks to stop piracy.
It will be interesting to see how the long-term effects will show in France after a few people will be punished as an example for the others.