French Internet users are abandoning P2P systems in favor of hosting sites. With the alternative, they want to avoid the consequences of Hadopi, a law that penalizes download of files protected by copyright, and that «watches», mostly, sharing networks.
According to a report by the newspaper Le Figaro, citing a study by ComScore, in the last year the number of visits to Megaupload – a file hosting site – grew 35 percent in France, a country where the service totaled 7.4 million users in the past November month. To give you an idea, in 2008 the monthly average of the site was 350 thousand visitors.
Megaupload’s growth data suggests that the habits of French Internet users may be changing with the entry into force of Hadopi, but only in relation to the type of resources used to achieve the desired content.
In a study carried out for ZDNet.fr, 47 percent of French people responded that they considered the law useless and only 14 percent recognized it as a deterrent.
Hadopi plans to cut Internet access – for a maximum period of one year – as a way of penalizing content piracy. The concerned internet users are warned three times to stop with the downloads illegal. After the warning messages, the case is analyzed by legal experts who recommend a decision to the judge, who can then order the disconnection of the offenders.
According to the local press recently, since the new measures began to be applied in November, the French Government has already warned more than 100 thousand Internet users.
In Portugal, ACAPOR is preparing to deliver a list of 1,000 IP addresses of users who have downloaded pirated films to the Attorney General’s Office tomorrow, the first of many, according to the «threat» left by the association at the time. in which he announced the «initiative».
