So when SOPA is opposed it’s democracy. And when the Australian court finds for iiNet it’s democracy, but when a decision goes the other way it’s “bought and paid for”?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Choose what?
The course of their actions?

They can do whatever they want, if people want to fallow them that is their prerogative, but if you are talking about some mythical power to legislate respect you be surely sad at the end of the day.

You can’t force people to do what they don’t want to do, even more so when you are the minority, forcing others to do something only works when you got the majority of people on your side and only have a small percentage of the population against it, trying to force a big honking majority to do anything is futile, even more so when you don’t even have the power to do so, you can pass laws, now lets see if you can enforce them without the public.

Maybe not to you, that is paid to say otherwise, but most people can see what happens and they make up their own minds, if given the facts straight which you lying bastard will never do.

“Right, so you don’t pay for paper made from sustainably harvested trees? If your power company switches to solar you don’t have to pay for it?”

More stupid AC analogies. Can you reproduce a piece of paper instantly and with zero cost. No, you can’t. Fail. Can solar produce more power all the time for zero extra cost. No, it can’t. Fail again.

“Nice slight of hand.”

No sleight of hand, I simply corrected your incorrect definition of civil rights.

“Hadopi is about stopping piracy…”

Except that it doesn’t.

“Of course consumers oppose any action to make them pay for a product they’ve been enjoying taking illegally free.”

Of course consumers oppose any action that constantly chips away at fundamental rights we’ve enjoyed for thousands of years, all because disruptive digital technology is upsetting the gravy train for a very small percentage of the world’s population.

“The majority of the public don’t understand or care about copyright.”

Right, so why is it important again? Laws are supposed to reflect the will of “the majority of the public” so if most people don’t care about copyright and openly disrespect it, why should copyright supporters be allowed to drive expansion of laws in their favour to the detriment of far more important things like civil rights and the growth and sharing of culture?

I say let them think what they may, we know the truth VPN’s are nice.

I agree,

Important industry? You mean the industry that brought us such gems as Jack and Jill.

How about the lack of industry that brings movies to Sundance without a Hollywood chokehold, and just because you can;t get your collectively conservative head out of your ass, I am referring to Kickstarter

I was I was decimated by record profits.

Important industry? You mean the industry that brought us such gems as Jack and Jill.

Or, Nirvana, The Beatles, Steve Reich, Kraftwerk, George Clinton, Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefhart, Joy Division, Public Enemy.
But go ahead, trivialize the professional music community if it makes you feel better wwhile you rip us off.

How about the lack of industry that brings movies to Sundance without a Hollywood chokehold

Err, you wouldn’t be about to claim NO indie film that’s been to Sundance has ever been pirated against the film makers wishes would you?

Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets.[1] Other countries have similar awards (see music recording sales certification). Certification is not automatic; for an award to be made, the record label must request certification and pay a fee to have the sales of the recording audited. The audit is conducted against net shipments after returns (most often an artist’s royalty statement is used), which includes albums sold directly to retailers and one-stops, direct-to-consumer sales (music clubs and mail order) and other outlets..

you do not have civil rights “as a musician”.
there are no guarunteed rights as a musician just as there are no such rights in any field of employment.

Huh, that’s utter nonsense.
Of course workers have rights. Never heard of employment legislation?

Pirates have no right infringing on my copyright either. There’s two facts to chew on.

Mike you are clearly WRONG ! HADOPI was never a failure. You heard me ? NEVER !!

…

It was “LE FAILURE” !

or if you want to use proper french :
UN ECHEC ! :p

“Because it stops an important aspect of society (the arts) and an important industry from being decimated.”

The only industry that’s even close to being “decimated” is the shiny plastic disc industry. Ain’t technology wonderful?

“You really think people want to pay for bread and milk? If you offered it free of charge you’d be trampled in the stampede.”

And then we’d run out of bread and milk, at least until more was produced. Do you see us running out of music and movies any time soon? All the independent, non-industry studies say no, quite the opposite actually.

Yay for yet another AC analogy fail.

The reason why HADOPI is a success is due to the comparison of HADOPI to the RIAA’s own efforts – years of bribery and litigation and what did they get? Two allegedly guilty defendants, several generations worth of bad PR, and a huge bevy of sued children, grandmothers, homeless people, dead people, people without a computer, laser printers and Jason Fox’s iguana.

HADOPI is a success because it has yet to be a similarly notorious resounding failure.

“A straw-man is when you misrepresent your opponents position but the industry is literally arguing that infringing copies are lost sales so it’s a perfectly valid counterpoint to observe infringement going down with no corresponding increase in sales.”

All fish live in water, so all water is found in fish?

It’s not valid because it is a misleading way to represent the “goal” of any anti-piracy move. I don’t think anyone expect an overnight change – except perhaps Mike. That is what makes it a strawman, it really is Mike setting up something that “misrepresent your opponents position”, and then knocking it down to make them look bad.

Mike’s just butt hurt because HADOPI is a pretty good model for a three strikes system, with nothing in the way of the evil unfounded disconnections going on, which is something he rallied against here. Instead, it’s a balanced system, the 3 strike people are getting judicial review, and basically the law appears to be functional.

Since he can’t fault it’s function, he is now stuck having to create massive strawmen to knock over, to try to make it look like it’s not doing what they intended. He is the only one I can see in a hurry for it to fail.

Overnight change?

Wasn’t the data collected over the course of a year?

That’s significant time for the market to change if so many people stopped pirating.

Whoa… darryl is a native English speaker?! *mind blown*

Amazon MP3 store is available in France

“So, which is it? Is there proof that HADOPI has worked? Or, is it too early to find out? Pick one side, stop flip-flopping. You can’t claim both things at the same time.”

Paul, you are at it again. You are trying to create a black and white answer out of a situation that has a lot of grey in it.

Has P2P traffic dropped? Yup. Has encrypted traffic picked up? Yup. Is that a gain or a loss in the fight against piracy? Hello GREY!

Has overt piracy dropped? Based on the P2P drop, the answer would appear to be yes. Has record sales gone up yet? The answer would be no. Is that a gain or a loss in the fight against piracy? Hello GREY!

Your quick move to try to pin this down as a flip flop only goes to show how incredibly tone deaf you are in looking at this nuanced situation.

“I’ll do without, thanks.” – this from the man who admits freely to piracy because he can’t get all his favorite content in English in the country he is living in by choice. Flip flop much? 😉

Amen to that brother.

Plus, we have the other grey areas you usually refuse to discuss – the collateral damage, the lack of due process,……….. Are you willing to discuss these grey areas, or do you just cherry pick again?

Hmm, I can’t remember ever claiming Hadopi has ‘definitely’ stopped piracy.
You are aware that ‘Anonymous Coward’ posters can be many different people?
Here’s my position in black & white. The aim of any anti-piracy measure is to REDUCE piracy, to deter the majority of ordinary people from casually pirating. You will never ‘definitely stop’ piracy, just as you will never ‘definitely stop’ shoplifting. Is that too nuanced for you?
Secondly, the hypocrisy of claiming I/We cherry pick!
Sure, I’m open to discussing all the grey areas. Are you open to discussing the ‘lack of due process’ when anti-copyright believers pirate INSTEAD of getting copyright amended/dismantled through democratic means?
Are you open to discussing the ‘collateral damage’ when even self releasing artists (I know a few) have their music pirated instead of paid for and the excuse given is about hitting back at the RIAA and the gatekeepers?

Both sides of this debate argue their sides with blinders on. As people at this site often correctly point out, the creative industries report only numbers or studies that support their cause.

But it is the same on this site. The article and several comments have mentioned the academic article (by the Wellesley and Carnegie Mellon economists) and yet then made comments that fly in the face of the data.

For example, several people have said that although digital sales are up in France, they are also up in other countries despite the lack of Hadopi, citing this as proof that Hadopi is ineffective. The academic study showed that France’s digital sales moved the same as a set of 5 other European countries before Hadopi. After Hadopi, yes, the other European countries’ sales were up, but France’s were up by a lot more.

A few people keep pointing to the argument (from Le Monde) that new iphone models released in France may have caused this. Again, the academic study *specifically* addresses this in an appendix and shows with very clear data that it is unlikely to be the explanation.

I’m not arguing that that one study by itself proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hadopi is effective. But I find Mike and his clones on this site to be just as blind to the other side as they claim the RIAA and MPAA are, and often more flagrantly so. If you’re going to discredit a study by some respected academic researchers, at least understand what the study says so that you can point out true chinks in the arguments and not simply make up fallacies for your readers to swallow.

That’s a much more reasonable point of view. I refer to Mike “and his clones” with a little derision because their points of view are so one-sided but they are made as if they are objective truth.

Noting a rise in sales in France would be a correlation. Noting that France trended the same as the other countries for 52 weeks and then in the very week that awareness of Hadopi peaked, French sales rose by a greater amount than the other countries (after not having done so for 52 weeks) is still a correlation but makes a stronger argument for causality. Noting that the increase in france above the other countries (which is timed just as Hadopi peaked in awareness and no other time) was largest for high piracy genres and smallest for low piracy genres again points even more strongly at causality.

All data show correlations and few studies *ever* can definitively show causation, but clearly the paper has informative evidence. Whether you believe Hadopi is the most logical explanation for what is observed (or not) is up to you. The question is how reasonable are the alternative explanations? Since the increase in French sales above the other countries seems to occur *right* at peak awareness of hadopi and then simply persists (with no other increases), your alternative explanation would have to be something that increased sales in France more than other countries but ONLY during that exact month of peak awareness. Not impossible, but very coincidental. And that something would have to increase sales of high piracy genres more and low piracy genres less. And that something can’t be iphones, according to the data in the appendix of the study.

I read the entire academic study and the authors do note that there are possible alternative (and highly coincidental) explanations for the increase, but they argue that the most reasonable interpretation for all of their findings is that Hadopi converted some pirates into iTunes consumers.

Is this 100% convincing? No (but how often is a study 100% definitive?). Is it very informative? Yes. Does this tell us if Hadopi is worth it? Nope.

I appreciate the type of discussion you bring to this board PaulT. Quite different from the way that Mike (or the RIAA) writes. I guess my point is that I just see Mike and the RIAA as opposite sides of the same coin, and I prefer to see reasoned discourse like your last comment.