The authority responsible for monitoring illegal downloads in France, Hadopi, still functions. And in case you didn’t know, she’s still watching you.
How long gone are the days when politicians counted on Hadopi to put a stop to illegal downloads on the internet. Already criticized (or mocked) at the time for its focus on peer to peer (p2p) exchanges carried out on interfaces like eMule or BitTorrent, thus leaving aside direct downloading and illegal streaming, it seemed to have completely evaporated. However, if its activity has been greatly reduced, and its name disappeared from the radar following its merger in 2022 with the CSA to give birth to Arcom, it continues to send letters to the French.
The services of the ex-Hadopi in slow motion
The Hadopi fire services always warn! But a lot fewer people. These are just Arcom documents, which the media accessed The Informed, show well. In 2018, they studied 14 million files, and issued 1.2 million first warnings, accompanied in 150,000 cases by a second recommendation.
A few years later, the premises must be less noisy at the web regulator. Because, for the first half of 2023, it only had to process 1.252 million files. Worse, the number of first warnings issued in the same period collapsed to 64,621, while the number of second warnings fell to 16,812.
VPNs and paid streaming are game changers
Despite this, we should not believe that those downloading illegally are completely out of danger. Over the same first half of 2023, 479 legal actions were decided, with ultimately 232 cases dismissed, 81 convictions of a fine ranging from 150 to 500 euros, around thirty convictions of a fine of 100 to 1000 euros, and the rest reminders of the law.
According to an Arcom report dated 2022, it is partly changes in Internet users’ practices which are at the origin of the decline in this activity. On the illicit side, the predilection for illegal streaming, direct downloading and the increasingly massive use of VPNs are making Hadopi methods obsolete. On the legal side, the explosion in the availability of legal streaming, whether audiovisual like Netflix, or musical like Spotify, tends to reduce the number of Internet users breaking the law. So, should we continue on this path?
Source : The Informed
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