After years of debate and controversy the French Government has finally backtracked on the law which allowed errant subscribers to be disconnected from the Internet. This morning a decree was published which removed the possibility for file-sharers to
have their connections cut for copyright infringement. Instead, those caught by rightsholders will now be subjected to a system of automated fines. The so-called graduated response to the file-sharing issue has for years been championed by
the mainstream music and movie industries. One of the first countries to see value in the idea was France, and under the supportive eye of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, Hadopi was born. The taxpayer-funded agency would oversee monitoring of Internet
subscribers along with a mechanism for sending them successive warnings, each designed to be more worrying than the last. Controversially, the final warning would result in Internet disconnection. However, the idea that these threats would entice
subscribers into music and movie stores and away from unauthorized sites in a meaningful way never came to be. In June, a nine-member panel lead by former Canal Plus chairman Pierre Lescure produced a 700 page report on policies for advancing
entertainment industries in the digital age. Among other things, the panel concluded that the three strikes mechanism had failed to benefit authorized services as promised. It also recommended that the ultimate sanction of Internet disconnections for
infringers should be dumped. That recommendation has now been carried out by the French Government. Earlier this morning the Ministry of Culture published official decree No. 0157 of July 9, 2013 which removed the additional misdemeanor
punishable by suspension of access to a communication service. The decree goes on to explain that file-sharing offenses may still be punishable by a fine, up to 1500 euros in the case of gross negligence.
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