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A short while back I wrote a piece on "Anti-Counterfeit measures and the potential impact to user's web surfing rights".  In it I briefly mentioned "a French law" that was created to combat online copyright infringement; it essentially gave ‘infringers' three strikes before their access to the internet would be revoked.  The latest version of the bill added that a judicial review is required before any person's internet access can be shut off, which was present in the older versions of the law.  This law is now effective in France as of January 1^st, 2010, I could not find any cases in which it has been put into practice so far.  Then again it has only been a month.

Now while this change is seemingly beneficial to web users, the law can still be viewed as somewhat harsh especially in cases where it is unclear who is actually doing the infringing.  A potential infringer could be using an innocent party's unsecured wireless signal to download or seed pirated material or there could be a single party infringing on a machine with multiple users without anyone else knowing.  With no criminal or civil trials involved in these instances, at least in France, the possibility exists that innocent parties could have their internet access shut off becau se of the actions of others. 

Related to this is the issue of making a file available to be shared on a network; does it necessarily qualify as copyright infringement, and in the case of internet users in France could it cause you to lose access to the internet?  The owner of the machine hosting the pirated material may be unaware that this is happening at all. Are they, or should they be held responsible?

The debate over this is still ongoing but international precedent seems to indicate that yes they are responsible; the two cases that come to my mind instantly are the Pirate Bay torrent website and of Jammie Thomas-Rassett, which I'll mainly focus on here.  In Capitol v Thomas the defendant was sued for copyright infringement for downloading and sharing music.  The defence attorneys tried to claim that "Ms. Thomas" computer was hacked", and that the defendant was perhaps the victim in all of this but the judge quickly dismissed it and eventually the defendant was found liable for the damages. Interestingly the case was re-tried in 2009 based on new interpretations of what "making available"should mean.  While a similar verdict was reached, the fine was reduced from $1,920,000 USD originally to $25,000 USD. She is currently appealing this ruling.

Using the new HADOPI law and the ongoing Capitol v Thomas case as examples it is fairly obvious that the when it comes to file sharing the onus lies with web users to monitor their own online activities. If you are engaging in these acts you must be prepared to deal with the consequences if and when they arise.  It will be very interesting to see how the landmark copyright infringement case in the United States finally concludes and what implications it will have for the future.  As interesting will be the first applications of the HADOPI law in France.  One thing is for sure, owners of Intellectual Property are making their voices heard, and lawmakers are listening loud and clear.

Oh and one very interesting side note on the HADOPI law.  Apparently the font used in the logo by the HADOPI agency "was used without the prior consent of the trademark owner", who created the font for the sole use of France Telecom.  If there is a more perfect definition of irony I haven't heard it yet.