14 DAY TRIAL // France's Hadopi anti-piracy scheme has been an abysmal failure. The government, meaning taxpayers, has spent tens of millions of euros on the plan to bring pirates to justice, a one-sided type of justice at least.
However, it has very little to show for it. Just one person has been fined during the entire time.
So the government is looking to kill Hadopi, the agency that was supposed to handle the judge, jury, and executioner of pirates, but won't be replacing the anti-pirate scheme entirely.
In a report for the government, the nine members of a special-purpose panel have made several proposals for changes to copyright law, including changes to the Hadopi.
While the institution will be gone, penalties won't be abolished altogether. Instead, pirates will be served with a €60 ($78) fine that may go up for repeat offenders. But instead of the Hadopi handling the fines, it will be the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA).
These fines will be issued automatically for anyone accused of infringing, which could be quite problematic, but not out of the ordinary considering the increasingly draconian measures pushed by media corporations.
The report also called for the decriminalization of infringement like this, done by individuals, though there will still be penalties.
Overall, there are some good changes, but some bad ones as well. Of course, it's just a proposal, there's no guarantee whatsoever that it will be put into practice.
The report is some 700 pages long; there are 75 proposals in it in total, only a few of which deal with Hadopi. Among the other things being proposed is a levy on anything that can connect to the Internet, because they can be used for "piracy."
There are also proposals to get web companies, search engines in particular, to do the police's job and proactively remove infringing sites and content from results.