Said to be a priority for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the final passing of the bill was not possible on July 21 due, for the second time, to the absence of a sufficient number of deputies in the House of the Parliament.
Additionally, left-wing opposition parties proposed more than 800 amendments to the text, which made it practically impossible to end the debates before the summer holidays.
This is yet another step of what has become a nearly two-year nightmare for the French government. For former Socialist Minister of Culture Jack Lang, opponents to the Hadopi in his own political camp are displaying “primary anti-sarkozysm”: “The socialist Party is going opposite way to the principles we have always defended: economic regulation, especially in the domain of culture, and protection of artists rights,” quotes Le Figaro newspaper.
In November 2007, the French presidential palace announced a move towards a “graduated response” against Internet piracy, after holding discussions with Internet providers and artistic rights owners.
Following this move, the French Senate voted on the first version of the Hadopi Law at the end of October 2008 (Law for the Diffusion and Protection of Internet Creations), then approved even by opposition French socialist party.
Yet, in April 2009, opposition in the French Parliament won the rejection of the law by scheduling a vote while a large number of deputies were absent.
Major French artists such as the iconic Juliette Greco. at that time heavily criticized the Socialist Party for its work on rejecting Hadopi.
Then, in June this year, after the Parliament finally passed the law, the French Constitutional Council—a body that ensures the constitutionality of laws—refused to ratify several points, especially the part allowing a permanent Internet ban for users guilty of repeated piracy by shutting down their account and blacklisting them.
The Constitutional Council thereby recognized access to the Internet to be a basic human right for French citizens. Additionally, the Constitutional Council rejected the presupposition of guilt, which would have left Internet users with the burden of proof that they had not been pirating content.
The Hadopi law will lead to the creation of a national body, Hadopi (High Authority for the Diffusion and Protection of Internet Creations) and to new penalties for users offering access to copyright-content to other Web users. The initial version of the law also planned a “three strikes” graduated response to users downloading copyright content.
One, an email notification of the illegality of such downloads; two, a formal letter from Hadopi; three, a ban from using the Internet. Based on the decision from the Constitutional Council, it will be up to French justice and not up to Hadopi as initially suggested to decide to shut down Internet users’ accounts.
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