HADOPI Means To Get Tough

HADOPI, which a year ago came under fire because the results weren’t justifying the cost, wants new measures including the creation of a takedown notice designed to keep illegal content offline for up to six months.

It’s one of a number of measures the French agency is recommending, which also include hitting the pirates in their pockets.

Mireille Imbert-Quaretta, president of the Commission for the Protection of Rights, hopes to build a co-operation with advertisers and convince them not to support pirate domains.

A year ago French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti tasked Imbert-Quaretta with finding ways to tackle large scale commerical piracy online.

“There is no single solution to fight against counterfeiting on the internet,” Imbert-Quaretta warns in a new report to the government that was seen by Les Echoes, the country’s leading financial paper. “These kinds of charters are intended to create a framework for the involvement of stakeholders in the advertising and online payment industries in the fight against infringement of copyright and neighboring rights on the internet,” the report says.

Another proposal calls for the drawing up of a list of sites believed to be engaged in “massive” breaches of copyright.

Several agencies including the City of London Police have similar lists, but Imbert-Quaretta believes the French list should be made public. She says it will update the public about the legality of sites online, allow advertising and payment industry players to make informed decisions and be a reference for other potential intermediaries involved in piracy.

“The copyright holders are faced with the constant recurrence of content and links they have already demand the withdrawal of,” the report says.

To deal with this issue, the report recommends the “creation of an order for extended withdrawal,” in other words a takedown notice that not only says “takedown” but also “stay down.”

These notices would oblige a host to “stop and prevent, for a specified period, the reappearance of content that has been identified as constituting an infringement of copyright or related rights on the site.”