France Tracks Down 18M File-Sharers

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The French government tracked down 18 million file-sharers but, due to limited capacity, they were only able to send out 470,000 warnings to offenders. 18 million people? Think about that number for a minute, the entire population of France is just over 60 million. :eek:

Starting October last year French Internet users have been receiving letters as part of the three-strikes system built-in to the controversial Hadopi anti-piracy legislation. This week the agency responsible for the warnings gave out details on the scope of the operation. In the last 9 months 18 Million file-sharers were tracked, but due to limited capacity ‘only’ 470,000 warnings were sent out to first-time offenders.
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Content providers are too lazy, paying off goverments to give in but can't push out their stuff to users.
where to get somtehing that's not buyable??

Thep.. ohh thats right, it's not allowed to say that or something..

Anyways, it takes 2 years before a season thats aired in US to reach my country sometimes, with the internationality it doesnt work.

I talk with american people all the time, japan, south korea, all over the world, face to face, online, everywhere, everyday.

I don't want to be stuck ages behind other countries, so DL ? yes.. unfortunately I have to, music starting to get so many great services that are legal so I don't download music anymore.
it was not too damn hard making a service, but it wasnt the record companies that wanted it, but they resisted instead, now the service I got have about 20% market share in my country, meaning 20% who pay for pretty much all their music.

I can very well understand theese numbers, and don't understand the content providers why their so stupid.
 
AtkinS said:
I can very well understand theese numbers, and don't understand the content providers why their so stupid.
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Its greed. They still believe that they can implement a pay-per-view system for all media. They want money every time you watch something, listen to something or read something. Thats what AppleTV is for.
 
Tak Ne said:
Its greed. They still believe that they can implement a pay-per-view system for all media. They want money every time you watch something, listen to something or read something. Thats what AppleTV is for.
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again, doesnt work here. so not even that works, see why europeans pirate more ?
 
It's the French mentality. I already pirate baguettes (baked at home instead of purchased at the baker's) so media files was the next logical step. DSL2+ as standard everywhere helps too.
 
AtkinS said:
again, doesnt work here. so not even that works, see why europeans pirate more ?
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We know it doesn't work, because it doesn't work here in the US either. Plenty of people are willing to pay subscription fees for content, but not for every individual viewing of the content. Having fragmented service(like having to subscribe to 10 different services just to watch all of the video you want) doesn't help things either.

The fact is, that digital content is pretty much worth absolutely nothing. It only costs money to produce, and little to stream. Most of the money isn't even going to the people creating the content in a lot of these cases, and it's the big media distributors who are scared to death about losing their insanely profitable business model they've had for the past 100 years(buying content for little money, then raking in massive profits from subscribers or advertisers just for distributing it). Up until about 15 years ago, it was actually work for a company to distribute media. VHS, CD, DVD, etc. require manufacturing and being physically shipped around the globe, TV requires satellites and huge power hungry antennas, radio requires studios and antennas. But bandwidth on the internet costs next to nothing in comparison. The media distribution companies see their entire distribution method and profits becoming worthless overnight(well, they've had years to figure this stuff out they just like to procrastinate).
 
u know.. if i was living there, i would be friggen pissed that all my tax dollars are being wasted on this. Hell, i would be even more pissed that the government is being turned into cooperate lap dogs... (well, more so then b4)
 
France's 60 million population has around 24 million households. A 2007 survey only showed 53% as having internet. So, more people file-share than have internet?
 
Deffox said:
France's 60 million population has around 24 million households. A 2007 survey only showed 53% as having internet. So, more people file-share than have internet?
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I'm guessing a lot could have changed in 4 years. Still, retarded.
 
Merc1138 said:
We know it doesn't work, because it doesn't work here in the US either. Plenty of people are willing to pay subscription fees for content, but not for every individual viewing of the content. Having fragmented service(like having to subscribe to 10 different services just to watch all of the video you want) doesn't help things either.

The fact is, that digital content is pretty much worth absolutely nothing. It only costs money to produce, and little to stream. Most of the money isn't even going to the people creating the content in a lot of these cases, and it's the big media distributors who are scared to death about losing their insanely profitable business model they've had for the past 100 years(buying content for little money, then raking in massive profits from subscribers or advertisers just for distributing it). Up until about 15 years ago, it was actually work for a company to distribute media. VHS, CD, DVD, etc. require manufacturing and being physically shipped around the globe, TV requires satellites and huge power hungry antennas, radio requires studios and antennas. But bandwidth on the internet costs next to nothing in comparison. The media distribution companies see their entire distribution method and profits becoming worthless overnight(well, they've had years to figure this stuff out they just like to procrastinate).
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yes bandwidth is cheap, but why do people always leave out the backend needed for support? technicians, the hardware sure power they get in bulk and bandwidth is cheap.. but there are other costs involved people always forget, it is the same people who think games should be cheaper on steam cause they dont have to print disks....

They do by far still over charge, and i agree with you that the companies are in a panic mode cause their past 100 years is going good bye!
 
When a 1/3 of your country is sharing files, I think it's pretty obvious that no one cares about the laws, and the laws should be changed. What are they going to do, make 33% of the population criminals? This is getting so dumb.
 
So why does the government keep pushing to make sure everyone has access to broadband?
All they are going to do is create more pirates :)
 
Deffox said:
France's 60 million population has around 24 million households. A 2007 survey only showed 53% as having internet. So, more people file-share than have internet?
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How about the people hooked up to nearby unsecured Wi-Fi/free Wi-Fi?
 
Rizen said:
When a 1/3 of your country is sharing files, I think it's pretty obvious that no one cares about the laws, and the laws should be changed. What are they going to do, make 33% of the population criminals? This is getting so dumb.
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Exactly, when hard numbers like this are pushed out, it's only a matter of time before companies realize they've screwed themselves and need to move on from this epic " OH DUH moment" to tailoring their product to media we are wanting to use, and possibly making even more money than they have before by keeping with the times.

They CANNOT criminalize a third of their population. Obvious sign of something needs to change.
 
MrGuvernment said:
yes bandwidth is cheap, but why do people always leave out the backend needed for support? technicians, the hardware sure power they get in bulk and bandwidth is cheap.. but there are other costs involved people always forget, it is the same people who think games should be cheaper on steam cause they dont have to print disks....

They do by far still over charge, and i agree with you that the companies are in a panic mode cause their past 100 years is going good bye!
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I didn't leave out the back-end required to support digital distribution of content. It depends entirely on the method you choose for distribution. With something like peer to peer used for massive game patches(like blizzard did with WoW), what back-end? A direct download system like say, the itunes store obviously has a pretty substantial cost, but that's still absolutely nowhere near the cost of manufacturing physical media, shipping that media to retailers, and having to put it on a shelf in a retail store to get it sold. Scale is obviously a huge factor, but prior to digital content distribution via the internet it was almost impossible for someone to make music or short films and get it distributed beyond a small local area on their own. Now if I want to I can make a video and have it on the internet within minutes for the entire planet to see.

A small time video producer never stood much of a chance of getting anything on the air besides the local public access channel. Radio? Wasn't ever going to happen except for maybe a college station. But even public access cable channels and college radio stations still have huge costs(just diluted due to the amount of content providers, or subsidized as being part of an educational institution) that no one could match on their own and that would still only be local to a few surrounding cities for a massive cost.

Then there is the international audiences available to watch content. Look at anime, it used to be people either payed insane prices($30 for a 90 minute VHS movie) or swapped dubbed tapes at anime conventions. Why did it cost so much or leave most of the content inaccessible to the audience outside of Japan? Because distribution cost too much. Now sites like crunchyroll exist and can bring more viewers in a day than a company might have been happy to see over a year compared to 20 years ago.

Then there's the other massive benefit that costs next to nothing, simultaneous viewing of different content. It costs less to broadcast your media across the internet than it does to setup a radio or television station, and again you'll have a global audience instead of a local one. Additionally with the traditional broadcast media you're stuck showing only one thing at a time to viewers. Hulu can stream 500 different videos at once to thousands and thousands of people on the viewers own time, so you can hit pause or never miss the beginning of a show because you got home late. Hulu costs far less to operate than a nationwide television network and distribution to affiliate stations.

The established content industries are scared, were late to the game and have no idea wtf to do for the most part, and their biggest fear is that potential customers know it costs less these days to get content down the wire.
 
Steve said:
The French government tracked down 18 million file-sharers but, due to limited capacity, they were only able to send out 470,000 warnings to offenders. 18 million people? Think about that number for a minute, the entire population of France is just over 60 million. :eek:
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1 in 3 sounds right very close to the number of ISP accounts in France
which means just about EVERY ONE pirates :eek:
 
Elios said:
1 in 3 sounds right very close to the number of ISP accounts in France
which means just about EVERY ONE pirates :eek:
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I'm sure a lot of people want to access the content legally, but they can't, because there are no such alternatives. If you want the convenience of downloading a movie in minutes and being able to watch it anywhere (phone, stream it over your network etc.), piracy is the only choice.

While Europe got Spotify long before the US did, when it comes to movies, we're actually way behind. There's no Netflix in Europe, and no alternative that can match in terms of prices and the range of content available. This, combined with the high broadband speeds in most of Europe is what creates piracy.
 
Are they just going to throw the whole country in prison?

By their own admission, nearly a third of the population is downloading files.

Sooner or later, the rest of the population is going to get tired of footing the bill for the copyright enforcement wild goose chases. They're protecting a nonessential industry that the economy can live without, all the while draining resources that could be put to better use.
 
fattypants said:
Are they just going to throw the whole country in prison?

By their own admission, nearly a third of the population is downloading files.

Sooner or later, the rest of the population is going to get tired of footing the bill for the copyright enforcement wild goose chases. They're protecting a nonessential industry that the economy can live without, all the while draining resources that could be put to better use.
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its closer to every one
people rarely live on there own in the EU figure 2 to 3 people per home
and with a nearly 1 in 3 "pirate" to pop of France id say just about every one downloads some thing "illegally"

sounds more like civil disobedience to me at this point
 
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