March 14th, 2010 
Cliff Riseborough 
Last year, France passed 3 strikes ‘Hadopi’ laws which would allow French music labels to track pirates and legal authorities to fine them or shut down their Internet access for repeated copyright violations. This was supposed to magically convince pirates to buy products. SHOCKINGLY, it hasn’t quite worked.
As written on TorrentFreak, and according to a study published by the University of Rennes (available here…if you read French), the piracy rate has actually RISEN by 3 percent since the new laws were enacted.
Another remarkable statistic uncovered by the researchers is that half of all P2P users who download copyrighted content also buy digital content online. This means that if these users were disconnected from the Internet under the new law, the music industry would lose customers and thus revenue.
So…what now? What ‘brilliant’ program will be suggested next that will use mystical properties to change the thinking of illegal downloaders?
And to close, is anyone really surprised? In the battle between pirates and France, who would you bet on?
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