As part of anti-piracy scheme featuring warning letters, fines, and ISP disconnections, France has monitored and stored data on millions of internet users since 2010.

Digital rights groups insist that as a general surveillance and data retention scheme, the ‘Hadopi’ program violates fundamental rights.

Any program that monitors citizens’ internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses, must comply with EU rules. Activists said that under EU law, only “serious crime” qualifies and since petty file-sharing fails to make the grade, the whole program represents a mass violation of EU citizens’ fundamental rights.

Surveillance and Serious Crime

Seeking confirmation at the highest level, La Quadrature du Net, Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, began their challenge in France . The Council of State referred the matter to the Constitutional Council, which in turn referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for interpretation under EU law.

EU member states may not pass national laws that allow for the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data. Retention of traffic and location data is permitted on a targeted basis as a “preventative measure” but only when the purpose of retention is to fight “serious crime.”

In his non-binding opinion , CJEU Advocate General Szpunar described Hadopi’s access to personal data corresponding to an IP address as a “serious interference with fundamental rights,” the clearest sign yet that the right to privacy had already taken a blow.

CJEU judgments have balanced citizens’ rights and rightsholders’ right to copy many times over the years but here, case law was deemed potentially problematic. In fact so much so, AG Szpunar proposed “readjustment of the case-law of the Court” to ensure that rightsholders would not be left in a position where it was impossible to enforce their rights on BitTorrent and similar networks.

EU Law Shouldn’t Rule Surveillance Out

By last September, it was clear that a legal basis needed to be found to allow Hadopi and similar programs to continue. For example, the fluid nature of dynamic IP addresses was mentioned as an obstacle to comprehensive tracking.

Well-constructed arguments stated that balance could be found in securing the harvested data and, to protect fundamental rights, limitations on how much data could be used in the event an alleged file-sharer was prosecuted.

Ultimately, however, when infringement occurs exclusively online, an IP address may be the only means to track down an alleged infringer, leading to the conclusion that retention and access to civil identifying data is both “necessary” and “wholly proportionate.”

Copyrights Trump Privacy Rights

In its decision handed down Tuesday, initially only in French, the CJEU leaves no stone unturned in delivering a win for rightsholders. Despite the problematic case law, the judgment builds a framework for how monitoring and data retention can be conducted within the requirements of EU law.

The judgment deals with three key questions, summarized as follows:

1. Is civil identity data corresponding to an IP address included among the traffic and location data which, in principle, requires prior review by a court or administrative entity?

2. If yes, is EU law to be interpreted as precluding national legislation that provides for the collection of such data, corresponding to users’ IP addresses, without prior review by a court or administrative entity?

3. If yes, does EU law preclude the review from being performed in an adapted fashion, for example as an automated review?

In other words, are member states precluded from having a national law that authorizes a copyright authority to access stored IP addresses and civil identity data relating to users, collected by rightsholders monitoring their activities on the internet, for the purpose of taking further action, without a review by a court or administrative body?

Data collected includes date and time of alleged infringement, IP address, peer-to-peer protocol, user pseudonym, details of copyright works, filename, ISP name.

Ensuring Privacy and Data Security

The judgment notes that IP addresses can constitute both traffic data and personal data. However, IP addresses that are public and visible, as they are in file-sharing swarms, are not being used in connection with the provision of an ‘electronic communication service’.

The judgment also states that, if Member States seek to impose “an obligation to retain IP addresses in a general and indiscriminate manner, in order to attain an objective linked to combating criminal offenses in general”, they should lay down clear and precise rules in legislation relating to retention of data, meeting strict requirements.

IP and civil identity data must be separated from each other and all other data, in a secure and reliable computer system. When IP addresses and civil data need to be linked, a process that does not undermine the “watertight separation” should be used, and regularly inspected for effectiveness. When these rules are followed, even citizens’ data gathered indiscriminately cannot result in “serious interference” to fundamental rights.

The judgment notes that EU law does not “preclude the Member State concerned from imposing an obligation to retain IP addresses, in a general and indiscriminate manner, for the purposes of combating criminal offenses in general.”

Balancing Competing Rights

The CJEU says that while EU citizens using internet services “must have a guarantee that their privacy and freedom of expression” will be respected, those fundamental rights are not absolute. The prevention of crime or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others may see those rights deemed less important.

Then, with some fluidity, the CJEU pulls the rug on excuses and upgrades petty file-sharing to something, well, a bit more serious .

To prevent crime, it may be strictly necessary and proportional for IP addresses to be captured and retained for “combating criminal offenses such as offenses infringing copyright or related rights committed online.”

Indeed, not allowing the above “would carry a real risk of systemic impunity not only for criminal offenses infringing copyright or related rights, but also for other types of criminal offenses committed online or the commission or preparation of which is facilitated by the specific characteristics of the internet.”

Pirate Privacy? Not Here

The judgment adds that despite the strict security guarding private information, there’s always a chance that a person might find themselves profiled. And that, the court suggests, may be of their own making.

[S]uch a risk to privacy may arise, inter alia, where a person engages in activities infringing copyright or related rights on peer-to-peer networks repeatedly, or on a large scale, in connection with protected works of particular types that can be grouped together on the basis of the words in their title, revealing potentially sensitive information about aspects of that person’s private life.

Thus, in the present case, in the context of the graduated response administrative procedure, a holder of an IP address may be particularly exposed to such a risk to his or her privacy where that procedure reaches the stage at which Hadopi must decide whether or not to refer the matter to the public prosecution service with a view to the prosecution of that person for conduct liable to constitute the minor offense of gross negligence or the offense of counterfeiting.

Throughout the course of the next few paragraphs, the judgment mentions processing data for the “prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offenses,” and a quote from the French government stating that “the measures adopted by Hadopi in the context of the graduated response procedure ‘are of a pre-criminal nature directly linked to the judicial proceedings’.”

That leads to the predictable conclusion that EU law does not preclude national legislation that allows for the surveillance of internet users and the retention of their data, for the purpose of identifying users and taking legal action against them.

Member states just need to follow the rules to ensure that those who didn’t have their privacy breached when their data was collected, don’t have it breached or leaked as they wait for whatever punishment arrives in the mail.

La Quadrature du Net says it’s disappointed with the judgment.

“[T]his decision from the CJEU has, above all, validated the end of online anonymity. While in 2020 it stated that there was a right to online anonymity enshrined in the ePrivacy Directive, it is now abandoning it.

Unfortunately, by giving the police broad access to the civil identity associated with an IP address and to the content of a communication, it puts a de facto end to online anonymity.”

The judgment is available here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Vous connaissez tous notre amie Hadopi , cette bonne vieille haute autorité qui veille au grain sur les internets français pour protéger les pauvres ayants droits en coupant la connexion des vilains pirates que vous êtes ?

Et bien figurez-vous que ces joyeux drilles viennent de se voir offrir un joli cadeau par la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne (CJUE).

Anéfé, la Cour vient de rendre un arrêt le 30 avril 2024 qui inverse sa précédente jurisprudence sur la question de l’accès aux données personnelles des internautes, et notamment aux fameuses adresses IP .

Avant, c’était motus et bouche cousue, seuls les cas de criminalité grave pouvaient justifier qu’on aille fouiner dans ces données sensibles. Mais maintenant, la CJUE autorise, sous certaines conditions, l’accès massif et automatisé à l’ adresse IP associée à l’identité civile et au contenu d’une communication , sans contrôle préalable systématique par un juge ou une autorité administrative indépendante. C’est une sérieuse entaille dans le mur de la vie privée en ligne.

Hadopi est aux anges, forcément. Elle va pouvoir traquer plus facilement les vilains pirates, même si un contrôle judiciaire reste nécessaire dans certains cas. Un petit coup de fil aux FAI, et hop, voilà toutes les infos perso sur qui télécharge quoi.

Big Brother is watching you , comme dirait l’autre.

Alors OK, officiellement, c’est pour la « bonne » cause, lutter contre le piratage, tout ça mais on sait bien comment ça marche. Aujourd’hui, on autorise l’accès à votre nom, prénom et le contenu qui enfreint la loi, et demain, ce sera d’autres infos plus sensibles. D’autant que la CJUE dit aussi que bon, si les États ne jouent pas le jeu et n’appliquent pas ses décisions, elle finira par céder. C’est un peu con pour une institution censée faire respecter le droit.

Bref, c’est un coup dur pour l’ anonymat en ligne , même s’il ne disparaît pas totalement. Ça risque de faire tache d’huile. Les assoces comme La Quadrature du Net sont déjà sur le pied de guerre, mais le mal est fait. Va falloir croiser les doigts pour que ça ne donne pas trop d’idées à nos chers dirigeants…

En attendant, un conseil : soyez prudents . Évitez de trop en faire sur les réseaux P2P, chiffrez vos données, sécurisez vos connexions…etc. Et si vous voulez en savoir plus sur le sujet et soutenir ceux qui se battent, allez faire un tour sur le site de la Quadrature , c’est toujours instructif.

With millions of monthly users, BitTorrent’s reign at the top of the file-sharing seemed unstoppable in 2007, but the French government had other plans.

Presented to the Senate in June 2008, what would later become France’s Hadopi law envisioned a crackdown on peer-to-peer file-sharing via a ‘graduated response’ mechanism, with around eight million local BitTorrent users the primary targets. The Hadopi agency created to administer the new law was initially kept busy but in the background, file-hosting and video streaming platforms were providing a taste of things to come.

By 2011, once-dominant BitTorrent indexing sites found themselves suddenly outnumbered by ‘one-click’ hosting and similar sites including 4shared, Megaupload, Mediafire, Rapidshare and Hotfile. As the threat grew, rightsholders deployed the pejorative term ‘cyberlocker’ to describe ‘rogue’ file-hosting services, while BitTorrent-focused anti-piracy outfits found their peer-to-peer monitoring tools somewhat less relevant.

The inherent technical genius of the BitTorrent protocol means it continues today, silently moving around large files to millions of users. At the same time, the way internet users consume content has been transformed. Three years after BitTorrent traffic hit an all-time low in 2015, pirate streaming platform Openload was generating more traffic than Hulu and HBO Go.

Meanwhile, dedicated pirate IPTV services were hitting the mainstream, shifting the market once again and leaving Hadopi and successor Arcom with a decreasing pool of pirates they could monitor directly. Consisting mostly of those still using BitTorrent, the pool excluded users of streaming sites, illegal IPTV providers, file-hosting platforms, and VPN services.

Arcom Credited for BitTorrent Slump

In official documents published as part of the French 2024 budget bill, Arcom’s twin role as both audiovisual/telecoms regulator and anti-piracy agency accompanies accounts of recent achievements and those attributable to the infamous “graduated response” program.

“The graduated response, for its part, makes it possible to fight against illicit practices on a peer-to-peer basis,” reports Clair Landais, the government’s secretary general with responsibility for the protection of rights and freedoms.

“If, in 2010, more than 8 million Internet users used peer-to-peer for criminal purposes, the efforts of Hadopi and now Arcom to put an end to these practices have made it possible to reduce them by almost by 75%. In 2022, 2 million Internet users have illicitly consumed peer-to-peer content, or 22% of Internet users engaging in illicit practices.”

While the history books provide much-needed nuance, Hadopi and now Arcom’s efforts to reduce piracy go beyond enforcement. The regulator aims to educate the public on the importance of supporting legal services while encouraging the availability of those platforms in the marketplace.

“Building on these encouraging results, due to the constant progression of the legal offer, in particular subscription video on demand (VOD) services and music streaming offers, combined with the anti-piracy policy led by the public authorities and rights holders, the latter adjust their actions in the fight against peer-to-peer,” Landais notes.

This version of events suggests the massive reduction in BitTorrent piracy led to the creation of legal video platforms. In reality, the availability of attractive legal content also played a key role in the reduction of piracy rates and continues to do so.

Arcom’s Piracy Blocking Program

Referrals to the ‘graduated response’ scheme have been trending down since 2016, with an 11% decline in 2022 alone. The report predicts the trend will continue, with another 10% reduction in 2023 followed by a modest 5% annual reduction from 2024.

The earlier highlighted shifts in consumption leave Arcom with plenty of work to do. The threat posed by illicit IPTV services means the fight against live sports piracy is a priority, along with Arcom’s site blocking work and its ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with domain-hopping mirror sites.

According to Arcom data, during the whole of 2022 the regulator received 85 referrals from four sports rights holders (two publishers of audiovisual programs and two sports leagues), covering ten sports competitions, which led to the subsequent blocking of 767 domain names by local ISPs. That was merely a warm-up.

“During the period January-July 2023, the use of this system increased. Arcom thus received 85 referrals— but in only seven months – from the same four sports rights holders (two publishers of audiovisual programs and two sports leagues), covering ten sports competitions, for a total of 1,318 domain names effectively blocked by ISPs,” the report continues.

“Given the effectiveness of the system and its high use by rights holders, a maintenance, or even an increase in the number of blocked domain names, would bring the total to around 700 number of domain names blocked for the last quarter — approximately 2,000 domain names blocked for the whole of 2023,” the report predicts.

Arcom says that on average the processing time for sports rightsholders’ referrals is currently 3 to 5 days, but that may decrease beginning in autumn 2023 and more widely in 2024, following the effective implementation of automation tools.

Tackling Mirror Sites

So-called mirror sites (blocked platforms that subsequently reappear online) are handled under Article L. 331-27 of the Intellectual Property Code introduced in October 2022. During the last quarter of 2022, Arcom received 22 referrals from four rights holders, covering 45 domain names.

Between January and July 2023, Arcom received 32 referrals from three rights holders, covering a total of 182 domain names. The administrative rules for blocking mirror sites are more complex, generating a two-month delay before they can be reported to Arcom.

The regulator says it usually processes files in eight or nine days but since blocking of IPTV services requires advanced verification, some requests may take longer to handle. Overall, current mirror site processing time is approximately 14 days.

“This is the reason why the average time for notification of blocking measures for sites illicitly broadcasting sporting events and competitions or mirror sites was set, provisionally, at 10 days for 2023 with an overall trend towards a reduction in this deadline over the period 2024-2026 with a target of 7 days,” the report concludes.

The full report, first reported by NextInpact , is available here (French, pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Following the creation of its Hadopi anti-piracy agency over 13 years ago, France monitored and stored data on millions of users suspected of infringing copyrights.

The majority were BitTorrent users and the plan was to use evidence of their piracy activities as a basis for escalating actions including warnings, fines, and ultimately, internet disconnections.

Operating the program for a decade cost French taxpayers 82 million euros ($86.5 million) but according to digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, Hadopi’s “mass internet surveillance” destroyed citizens’ fundamental right to privacy.

In its quest to hold Hadopi to account, La Quadrature du Net highlighted one of the program’s implementing decrees, which authorizes the creation of files containing internet users’ IP addresses plus personal identification data obtained from their internet service providers.

In the belief that represents a breach of EU data protection laws, the digital rights group, ISPs, and other like-minded supporters, took their fight to the French legal system.

Referral to the EU’s Highest Court

In the vast majority of cases, senior judges in EU member states have little need to consult Europe’s highest court. At least in theory, all countries are already in compliance with EU law but every now and again, the gravity of specific cases becomes apparent, resulting in a referral seeking clarification on how EU law should be interpreted.

In advance of a full ruling, the conundrum posed by the French referral was evident in a non-binding opinion handed down last October by CJEU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar.

Under EU law, member states may not pass national laws that allow for the general and indiscriminate retention of citizens’ traffic and location data. Retention of such data is permitted on a targeted basis, but only as a “preventative measure” for the purposes of fighting “serious crime.” In respect of the information held by Hadopi, the Advocate General found that when the data points are combined, it’s possible to link French citizens’ identities with the content they access.

The CJEU’s top legal advisor described the Hadopi situation as “serious interference with fundamental rights” but short of accepting “general impunity for offenses committed exclusively online,” something would have to give. The compromise suggested last year would require “readjustment of the case-law of the Court” to allow rightsholders to enforce their rights when an IP address is the only means by which an infringer can be identified (CJEU, pdf ) .

Advocate General Delivers Opinion (Case C-470/21)

The opinion delivered Thursday begins with an overview of Hadopi and the methods it uses to deter online piracy. By monitoring initial and subsequent acts of infringement and maintaining relevant databases, it’s possible to identify repeat infringers eligible for the next deterrent steps. A decree adopted in 2010 allows Hadopi to request subscriber information from ISPs in response to the provision of IP addresses, mostly obtained from BitTorrent swarms.

The legal proceedings brought by La Quadrature du Net and the Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, seek to establish whether the collection of civil identity data corresponding to IP addresses, and subsequent automated processing of data to protect of intellectual property, are compatible with EU law absent a review by a court or independent administrative body.

The short answer from the AG’s opinion is that Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58 ( pdf ) must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which allows ISPs and other electronic communications services to retain, and an administrative authority such as Hadopi to access, civil identity data corresponding to IP addresses for the purposes of identifying suspected infringers.

No court or review body needs to be involved, but use of such data is only permitted when it is the only means of investigation that can enable a suspected infringer to be identified.

Discussion and Reasoning

In the opinion of AG Szpunar, there is a need to reconcile the rights at issue; the protection of private life and personal data on one hand, and the right to property enshrined in Article 17 of the Charter , which the graduated response mechanism seeks to uphold by protecting copyright and related rights.

The opinion notes that “the great majority” of the IP addresses communicated by Hadopi are dynamic IP addresses, which only correspond to a specific identity at a single moment, which preclude any exhaustive tracking.

“I must emphasise that the protection of fundamental rights on the internet does not in my view justify access to the data relating solely to the IP address, the content of a work and the identity of the person who made it available in breach of copyright not being permitted, but means only that the retention of and access to those data must be accompanied by guarantees,” his opinion continues.

“To my mind, an analogy with the real world is telling: a person suspected of having committed theft cannot rely on his or her right to protection of his or her private life to prevent those responsible for prosecuting that offense from ascertaining what the content stolen is. On the other hand, that person may rightly rely on his or her fundamental rights to ensure that, during the proceedings, access will not be provided to more extensive data than just the data necessary for the classification of the alleged offense.”

No Mass Surveillance But a Proportionate Response

The digital rights groups’ legal action characterizes the Hadopi program as a general surveillance and data retention scheme, operating contrary to fundamental rights. AG Szpunar finds otherwise, noting that there doesn’t even appear to be general surveillance of the users present in peer-to-peer networks.

“That procedure does not involve monitoring their entire activity on a given network in order to determine whether they have made a work available in breach of copyright, but rather determining, on the basis of a file identified as counterfeit, the holder of the internet access through which the user made the content available,” his opinion reads.

“[I]t is not a question of monitoring the activity of all users of peer-to-peer networks, but only that of persons uploading infringing files, as the uploading of those files reveals much less information about the person’s private life because files may be uploaded for the sole purpose of enabling those users then to download other files.”

Inevitable Outcome in Favor of Rightsholders

The overall conclusion reached by the Attorney General considers the purpose for which the data is harvested and the challenges of identifying suspected online infringers by other means. The inability to establish a detailed profile of a person’s private life via a dynamic IP address is cited on one hand, while the critical value of an IP address in an investigation sits somewhat uncomfortably on the other.

“[I]t follows from the actual case-law of the Court that, where an offense is committed exclusively online, such as an infringement of copyright on a peer-to-peer network, the IP address may be the only means of investigation enabling the person to whom that address was assigned at the time of the commission of the infringement to be identified,” the AG continues.

In closing, the retention and access to civil identifying data, corresponding to an IP address for the purposes of prosecuting online infringements, is described as “strictly necessary” and “wholly proportionate” to the objective pursued

“Such an interpretation is in my view inevitable,” the AG notes, “unless it is accepted that a whole range of criminal offenses may evade prosecution entirely.”

The CJEU’s summary and AG Szpunar’s full opinion are available here ( pdf ) and here .

CJEU note: The Advocate General’s Opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice. It is the role of the Advocates General to propose to the Court, in complete independence, a legal solution to the cases for which they are responsible. The Judges of the Court are now beginning their deliberations in this case. Judgment will be given at a later date

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Insatisfaits par les services de streaming et leur multiplication, voire pour des raisons idéologiques, nombreux sont ceux qui continuent d’avoir recours au piratage. [Lire la suite]

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Une nouvelle campagne contre le piratage sera diffusée à partir de juin. Elle reprend les codes de la psychiatrie, en mettant en scène trois personnes qui essaient de ne pas replonger dans les méandres du piratage. Comme des addicts. [Lire la suite]

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When the French government formed a new anti-piracy agency called Hadopi, the mission was to significantly disrupt BitTorrent and similar peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Hadopi was a pioneer of the so-called “graduated response” scheme which consists of monitoring a file-sharer’s internet activities and following up with a warning notice to deter their behavior. Any future incidents attract escalating responses including fines and internet disconnections. Between 2010 and 2020, Hadopi issued 12.7 million warning notices at a cost to French taxpayers of 82 million euros .

The program’s effect on overall piracy rates remains up for debate but according to French internet rights groups, Hadopi doesn’t just take citizens’ money. When it monitors citizens’ internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses to prevent behavior that isn’t a “serious crime,” Hadopi violates fundamental rights.

Protecting Rights

Despite its authorization under the new law, the official launch of the Hadopi agency in 2009 met with significant opposition. File-sharers had issues with the program for obvious reasons but for digital rights group La Quadrature du Net , massive internet surveillance to protect copying rights had arrived at the expense of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy.

La Quadrature’s opposition to the Hadopi anti-piracy program focuses on the law crafted to support it. One of the implementing decrees authorizes the creation of files containing internet users’ IP addresses plus personal identification data obtained from their internet service providers.

According to the digital rights group’s interpretation of EU law, that is unlawful.

Legal Challenge in France

With support from the Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, in 2019 La Quadrature filed an appeal before the Council of State ( Conseil d’État ), requesting a repeal of the decree that authorizes the processing of personal information.

The Council of State referred the matter to the Constitutional Council and its subsequent decision gave La Quadrature the impression that Hadopi’s position was untenable. For their part, Hadopi and the government reached the opposite conclusion.

Legal Challenge Reaches CJEU

The Council of State heard La Quadrature’s appeal and then referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for interpretation under EU law.

EU member states cannot pass national laws that allow for the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data. As a “preventative measure” on a targeted basis, retention of traffic and location data is permitted, but only when the purpose of retaining the data is to fight “serious crime.”

In CJEU Advocate General Szpunar’s non-binding opinion issued last October, friction between privacy rights and the ability to enforce copyrights were on full display.

Hadopi vs. Fundamental Rights

AG Szpunar described Hadopi’s access to personal data corresponding to an IP address as a “serious interference with fundamental rights.” These data points may not be sensitive in isolation but when combined, a person’s identity finds itself attached to the IP address and the content that was accessed behind it.

However, in common with criminal cases where retention is permitted when an IP address is the only means of investigation, the AG concluded that the same should apply in Hadopi’s case, “short of accepting general impunity for offenses committed exclusively online.”

Faced with an opinion that recognizes difficulties faced by rightsholders but runs up against case-law, AG Szpunar proposed “readjustment of the case-law of the Court.” This would ensure that rightsholders retain the ability to enforce their rights, when an IP address is the only means by which an infringer can be identified (CJEU, pdf) .

The first hearing in the case took place on Tuesday with another legal opinion expected late September 2023.

The CJEU is expected to hand down its ruling before the end of the year.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Faced with the impossibility of filing lawsuits against every single site offering content without a license, rightsholders all over the world are now fully invested in site blocking.

Whether the process begins with a court injunction or utilizes an administrative framework (or both), rightsholders are causing hundreds of sites and associated domains to be blocked by ISPs every month. Those seeking a clear and panoramic view of the scale of site blocking measures will find an opaque system, one that seems designed to limit how much information is made available to the public.

That being said, actions that begin in court can shine some light on who is obtaining blocking orders. In France, premium TV company Canal+ has reentered the fray with what appears to be the first injunction designed to reduce piracy of Formula 1.

High Court in Paris Says ‘Oui’

New legislation in France allows rightsholders to enter an accelerated legal process that authorizes “proportionate measures” to prevent online infringement. In January, sports broadcaster beIN became the first company to obtain a blocking order protecting football rights.

Ongoing blocking now supports beIN, football league UEFA, and local broadcaster Canal+, with the latter now expanding its campaign to underpin the company’s new contract with Formula 1.

Lequipe reports that the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris has granted a Canal+ application to render inaccessible 39 pirate sites offering unlicensed Formula 1 streams. The order covers four major French ISPs – Bouygues, Orange, Free, and SFR.

The order won by Canal+ is ‘dynamic’, meaning that when pirates take countermeasures with new domains, mirror sites or proxies, the Arcom regulator has the power to add new domains to the list and compel the ISPs to block them. In a sign of how quickly these updates can take place, the original order to block 39 domains has already expanded to 59 domains and probably won’t stop there.

Local reports indicate that the ISP blocks are DNS-based, meaning that internet users who switch to third-party DNS providers (such as Google or Cloudflare) are unaffected by the blockades. Whether the authorities will seek to close this loophole remains to be seen but at least for now, blocking is moving full steam ahead in France.

Hundreds of Domains Blocked Since January

During a press conference in April, Arcom announced that since its inception in January, 250 sports piracy sites had been blocked, together representing more than 60% of the country’s ‘pirate’ sports audience. By mid-May, the number of pirate sites blocked had swelled to around 400, a figure that includes sites blocked by court order and any additional sites reappearing to circumvent blocking.

Arcom says that at least 1,200 additional pirate sites have also been blocked by French ISPs resulting in dramatic falls in piracy, including a reported 77% decline in piracy of the Champions League competition.

Whether any of this activity will translate to consumers spending more on legitimate services remains to be seen but that’s unlikely to be a prominent feature in anti-piracy reports, at least on the same slides. Graphs tend to show how effective blocking is at preventing users from visiting blocked domains, not how effective they are at converting former pirates to paying customers.

In that respect, France also has additional problems of its own making that seem to fuel piracy , rather than discourage it.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Le rapport pour 2021 de la Hadopi montre un recul des mails d'avertissement envoyés aux internautes suspectés de pirater des œuvres culturelles. Une chute déjà amorcée depuis quelques années. [Lire la suite]

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