FrenchKat, The 1709 Blog, Link, (CC-BY)
By decree dated July 8th (yesterday) and published in today’s Official Journal, the French government has severely limited the three-strikes graduated response scheme put in place to combat P2P piracy.
Article 2 of the decree repeals the provision of the Intellectual Property Code that allowed a court to suspend a person’s internet access for up to one month where such person had been shown to be negligent in securing his internet access (so-called “négligence caractérisée“). It will be recalled that this was the legal concept introduced by the HADOPI laws in reference to the internet subscriber and his liability irrespective of the identity of the actual copyright infringer.
It should however be pointed out that this decree does not appear to affect the court’s power to order internet suspension (for up to one year) as a complementary penalty for those who are actually guilty of copyright infringement.
