French give second warning to pirates

Sarkozy wants G20 to agree to fight online piracy

In activity for about three months, the public body created to monitor the new French rules against content piracy in the digital world, Hadopi, presented a balance and detailed the next steps of its activity.

The organization is preparing to send a second warning to the «repeat pirates» that they are violating the law, by persisting in the unauthorized downloading of content protected by intellectual property rights.

It should be emphasized that, under the terms of the Law approved in 2009, after three notices, the target parties incur sanctions that include deprivation of Internet access for a period of time. The decision will rest with a judge, to whom the public institute must pass the case at that time.

Pirates will be notified by Hadopi by email and by regular mail, by registered letter, to ensure receipt of the warning, explains the organization, cited by the international press.

By the end of December, Hadopi would have sent about 70,000 alerts to Internet users, a number that is below what the French press had put forward a few weeks ago.

The contacts made by the institution to whom it violates intellectual property rights with illegal online downloads, arise from requests made by the companies that manage these rights, allegedly infringed, after an analysis made by experts of the institution to the information delivered.

As of June, Hadopi estimates that it will be in a position to send around 10,000 daily warnings to Internet users with a conduct that violates the country’s legislation for digital content. The number will multiply the current number by five.

In Portugal, some industry groups have made lobby in order to implement a legal framework identical to that of France and other European countries that are moving in the same direction, such as the United Kingdom.

For now, the legislation does not exist, but this morning TeK was writing about the good reception of the CDS in the view of AFP, which defends measures identical to those applied in France, for Portugal.