BOURCART Léo

M2 Comparative politics
October, 5th 2010

ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRADUATE PROGRAMME

First paper : Introduction of the group research project for the public policies seminary
(Marya Egunova, Jérémie Bouillet, Benjamin Morel, Léo Bourcart)

Hadopi1 is a very new French agency specifically created to prevent illegal downloading on

internet. This organisation finally appeared in January 2010 after a long time of legislative debates

and polemical discussions in the media.

Through a policy studies view, Hadopi's aims and functioning are particularly interesting.

Indeed, an adapted juridical answer to this particular phenomenon that is mass downloading2 has for

now no serious equivalents in the rest of the world.

The need of a a specific regulation for the circulation of numerical productions became an

obligation with the European Directive 2001/29/EC3. However, until 2009, the only way that every

European country had to control the internet traffic was the use of the classical theft laws, which

was clearly inefficient and inappropriate.

On this context, France seems to be the first member country to develop an adapted action

against illegal downloading : the role of Hadopi consists of targeting internet users that download

music through peer-to-peer4 networks and sending to them warning e-mails. After several warns,

the main sanction for the concerned people will be the privation of their internet connection.

1 “Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur internet”. The English equivalent
could be “High Authority of the Copyright Protection and the Legal Distribution of Works on Internet”
2 On this summary it seems pertinent to distinct “mass downloading” that describes the activity of downloading
music, movies or video-games in a entertaining purpose, and piracy, that is related to the activities of stealing
industrial informations, professional software, or breaking Operation Systems, and requires much more computer
skills.
3 European Directive of the harmonization of certain aspects of copyrights and related rights in the information
society, 22 May 2001
4 The expression peer-to-peer defines the Internet networks of exchange that have the particularity to be fully
decentralized. For more information, the dedicated article of wikipedia is really complete and well-done :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
 However, for several reasons Hadopi is hardly criticized :

On a technical aspect, several experts have pointed the fact that the Hadopi strategy would

not be effective : First, the proportion of people that illegally download in France would be too

high to be controlled by a single agency. Second, Hadopi focuses its action on peer-to-peer

networks, whereas there is other ways to download5.

On a juridical view, the agency has been firstly declared anti-constitutional. In fact, a French

administration can not have the juridical power to punish people, whatever the sanction is. To cut

the access of an internet connexion, the Hadopi agency can finally not do anything by itself, and has

to enforce a judiciary procedure through a tribunal, which can take a very long time.

Last but not least, Hadopi has hired a French private company6 to identify and report the

illegal downloads. This company will have the authorization to literally spy the activities of the

French internet users, which is still not tolerable by a part of the political class7.

According to the most recent newspapers, neither the responsible of the project, nor its most

radical opponents are able to say if Hadopi will work8.

As a public policy object, it is difficult to classify this new type of administration. Instead of

an agency, Hadopi is more a coordinator between the complainants, the justice and a subcontractor

company, which doesn't fit in any pre-existent categories. As a public policy researcher, this is also

what makes this topic so interesting: What could be a good definition for an organisation as

Hadopi ?

5 The two other principal ways to download are the streaming (access to numerical contents directly online), and the
Direct Downloading or DDL (To import numerical content directly from a server that is located in an other country).
6 Sources : Trident Media Guard - http://tmg.eu/
7 Signed by famous deputies the petition of the SVM magazine is a good example.
(http://www.svmlemag.fr/petition_riposte_graduee_liste)

8 http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/10/04/l-hadopi-a-envoye-ses-premiers-courriels-
avertissement_1420203_651865.html#ens_id=1280818