

France Tracks Down 18 Million File-Sharers - ThomPete
http://torrentfreak.com/france-tracks-down-18-million-file-sharers-110714/

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flipbrad
Link to original (french):
[http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2011/07/12/l-hado...](http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2011/07/12/l-hadopi-
devoile-ses-resultats-contre-le-piratage-sur-internet_1547830_651865.html)

18 million observed instances of filesharing in supposed breach of copyright,
not 18 million filesharers. Of a million lucky instances chosen at random, 90%
of these led to the identification of lucky lucky account holders. Of the
900,000, 470,000 first warnings were sent out. The rest might presumably be
duplicates, or based abroad, because it's hard to see why the other 430,000
IDs were not part of the email-sending exercise. they might also be libraries,
internet cafs, etc.

Interestingly, it seems HADOPI really took the UN's human rights criticism of
HADOPI-like measures; it recently put out a press release urging caution,
transparency and legal compliance by those seeking to develop deep packet
inspection technology and other filters (which it must be notified of),
telling the private sector to instead focus on developing legal media
offerings and experimenting with pricing
([http://www.hadopi.fr/download/sites/default/files/page/pdf/C...](http://www.hadopi.fr/download/sites/default/files/page/pdf/CP-
Hadopi-060711.pdf))

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robtoo
According to wikipedia, France only has 20 million homes with broadband.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_broadband_Internet_users)

And yet _18 Million file-sharers were tracked_? Doesn't pass the smell test,
sorry.

~~~
wazoox
Exactly my thought :) I suppose they probably tracked 18 millions separate
"sharing activities", for instance 1.8 million people each sharing 10
different torrents.

edit: I just checked the linked article, and it's actually talking of 18
millions infractions from an undefined number of file sharers.

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fab13n
[french citizen here]

Hadopi had a couple of effects:

* You know you've got 2 free warnings before you have to become careful, e.g. by subscribing to a VPN for a couple euros a day.

* Hadopi only monitors P2P; French movies and music massively migrated to megaupload et al.

* It has shown that many people are willing to pay a reasonable fee for unlimited media access, and that if majors won't take their money, then VPN and file sharing providers gladly will.

I hoped it would promote uncontrollable technologies such as darknets or F2F
networks, but they've been way too inefficient to do that.

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panacea
Enforcing laws that result in the criminalisation of a huge proportion of the
population seems like bad governance if you ask me.

~~~
rwmj
It's bad governance, but many governments have "previous form". About 5% of
the population of the UK are regular cannabis users, with many many more being
occasional users.

~~~
estel
Woah, 5%? Do you have a citation for that?

~~~
DrJokepu
I hate to be _that_ person who points it out, but a trivial Google search will
yield plenty of sources:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=uk+cannabis+user+population>

~~~
rwmj
OK, it seems higher than I thought. The number I had was "more than 3 million"
(from [1]) which would be 5%. But it seems the number may be higher.

This is _regular_ users. Occasional users and people who have tried it in the
past, are both much higher figures.

[1] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2923647.stm>

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meow
Wow, so they want to hunt down 30% of their population (or possibly more when
only considering % of people using internet) for this offense...

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aces
I'd be really curious to see how this translates to music and tvshow/movie
sales over the next 6 months. Do they go up or down and by how much.

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5h
They emailed the subscribers .... does anybody check the mailbox that came
with their connection? I know certainly don't!

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pwg
Time to start switching to i2p?

<http://www.i2p2.de/>

~~~
Refringe
Or newsgroups... ;)

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serichsen
I hope that many politicians are among the false positives.

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b2spirit
France is nuts. Leave the people alone!

