François Hollande, the French socialist candidate expected to best President Nicholas Sarkozy following the national runoff election held Sunday, told national media recently that he would replace the country’s harsh Internet restrictions with a wholly different scheme that strengthens the relationship between artists and their fans.
The French Internet law, strongly supported by Sarkozy, bans users from going online for one year after three individual violations of copyright law. U.S. industry played a key role in lobbying for the “Creation and Internet law,” whereas French socialists played a key role in opposing it.
The law created an Internet regulator called the “High Authority of Diffusion of the Art Works and Protection of the Rights on the Internet” (HADOPI), with the aim of detecting up to 150,000 incidents of copyright infringement per day and intercepting individual users with messages about the consequences of piracy, up to and including a year of disconnection for a third offense.
And that’s precisely what Hollande said he wants to end.
Speaking to French film website AlloCiné last month, Hollande said that HADOPI sows “injustice” by disconnecting people from the Internet. “Further, I don’t consider piracy to be a minor problem,” he reportedly said. “That’s why I’m proposing to replace HADOPI by voting on a law based on Act 2 of the Cultural Exception which will guarantee financing of French cinema and protection of authors’ rights. I want to break with destructive simplism that has not solved anything and which has uselessly contributed to separating artists from their audience. There is no simple solution, but a new model to be invented.”
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