Last year, 2.6 million hacking complaints were sent to Arcom. Despite this impressive figure, very few of them have resulted in financial sanctions.
Arcom, an organization born from the merger of the CSA and Hadopi, publishes its 2023 annual report. The opportunity to take stock of the various actions carried out by the French audiovisual policeman, particularly in terms of fight against piracy. We observe that the number of complaints filed on this subject by rights holders continues to fall. In 2019, there were 9.1 million reporting, and “only” 2.6 million in 2023. While it is easy to think that this is due torise of legal offersArcom is not fooled.
“This phenomenon is due to the dynamism of an offer which offers new solutions to infringing consumers, such as the diversion of legal tools from their initial purpose (modification of DNS parameters, use of VPN) for illicit purposes, or the provision of turnkey offers similar to paid service packages (IPTV boxes and applications)“. The organization also confirms this by showing how the French circumvent the blocking of pirate sites.
Among the millions of reports made to Arcom, very few ended with sanctions
In accordance with the principle of graduated responseInternet users were warned once, then twice, then three times before their information was transmitted to the Public Prosecutor for possible legal proceedings. In total, 3,844 people received a 3rd letter from Arcom last year, and less than half of the cases (1,526) ended up in the hands of the courts. Not all of them are followed by sanctions, however.
Read also – The end of pirate sites? This very effective control method wreaks havoc
“In 2023, 838 legal proceedings were brought to the attention of Arcom, including 28% result to financial sanctions (fines or equivalent) whether they involve criminal sanctions stricto sensu or alternatives to prosecution accompanied by the payment of a fine (penal composition) or a citizen contribution (the amount of which, fixed by the
Public Prosecutor, is paid to approved victim support associations […])“. In other words, only 232 pirates had to pay something according to the report. The figure should of course not be minimized, but when compared to the total number of reports, it is a safe bet that it will not be very dissuasive.