Copyright Cheats Face the Music in France

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Monday, February 20, 2012

Copyright Cheats Face the Music in France 

By ERIC PFANNER

PARIS — The curtain has risen on the third act of one of the most ambitious French musical productions, one whose goal is to end digital piracy.

More than two years after France approved a tough crackdown on copyright cheats, the agency that oversees it sent its first cases to the courts last week. Some repeat offenders may temporarily be cut off from the Internet.

Studies show that the appeal of piracy has waned in France since the so-called three-strikes law, hailed by the music and movie industries and hated by advocates of an open Internet, went into effect. Digital sales, which were slow to get started in France, are growing. Music industry revenues are starting to stabilize.

“I think more and more French people understand that artists should get paid for their work,” said Pascal Nègre, president of Universal Music France. “I think everybody has a friend who has received an e-mail. This creates a buzz. There is an educational effect.”

But the curtain has not yet come down for the fallen file-sharers. As a presidential election nears, opposition to the law is heating up.

Rivals of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who championed the measure, say that it infringes on civil liberties. His opponents, building on the momentum from a successful campaign to defeat two U.S. congressional bills aimed at curbing piracy, as well as a swell of protest against an international copyright treaty, want to repeal or revamp the French law.

The agency that administers the three-strikes system, known by the French abbreviation Hadopi, had sent 822,000 warnings by e-mail to suspected offenders as of the end of December. Those were followed up by 68,000 second warnings, issued through registered mail. Of those, 165 cases have gone on to the third stage, under which the courts are authorized to impose fines of €1,500, or nearly $2,000, and to suspend Internet connections for a month.