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Deutsch: Hadopi: Bericht verschweigt Rückgang bei den Verkaufszahlen

Although French Hadopi authority has issued its new report to show how effective the three-strikes law was in 2010 cutting Internet piracy to half, the reality is that the system has brought no increase in the revenues for the culture industry as expected by the law promoters.

“Benchmarking studies covering all of the sources available shows a clear downward trend in illegal P2P downloads. There is no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads,” says the new Hadopi report which gives a series of statistics showing a 29% decrease in visits to “pirate” sites in 2011 or a 66% drop in illegal file-sharing traffic.

One of the main arguments of the copyright holders, in favour of the three-strikes law, has been for years that piracy was the main cause of the revenue losses. Therefore, according to this argument, a significant cut down of piracy in France should consequently lead to an increase in revenues. Yet, in 2011, the French music industry experienced a decrease in the overall revenues by 3.9 percent and the French movie industry has had a drop in revenues by 2.7 percent.

This only proves what specialists have said time and again – chasing illegal downloading is not the solution that would support the entertainment industries in increasing their revenues. Moreover, the Hadopi report shows the decrease in illegal downloading on P2P platforms (BitTorrent, µTorrent, eMule and Limewire). What it does not shown is that French users have shifted from P2P to direct downloading and streaming which have marked a significant increase in 2011.

According to Médiamétrie, since October 2010 (when the first Hadopi warnings were sent), streaming and direct downloading have turned from 6.5 to 8.3 million unique visitors in France, which means a 29% increase.

The issue here is that this new Hadopi report which focuses entirely on P2P piracy drop, ignoring all the other aspects, will be used by anti-piracy lobbyists to show how effective anti-piracy laws can be so that they may promote them all over the world.

The results of the French presidential elections may have some impact upon the Hadopi law which is presently supported only by the present President Sarkozy. Only one other candidate, François Hollande, expressed the opinion that the law should be revised while all the other candidates appear to be in favour of the suppression of the law altogether.

French ‘Three Strikes’ Law Slashes Piracy, But Fails to Boost Sales (30.03.2012)
http://torrentfreak.com/french-three-strikes-law-slashes-piracy-but-fa...

Hadopi, 1 and ½ years after the launch (only in French, 27.03.2012)
http://hadopi.fr/actualites/agenda/hadopi-1-apres-son-lancement

The compressed Hadopi action report (only in French, 28.03.2012)
http://www.lefigaro.fr/hightech/2012/03/27/01007-20120327ARTFIG00670-l...

EDRi-gram: French Internet users on the verge of being disconnected (5.10.2011)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.19/hadopi-report-france-18-months