Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture and Communication, has celebrated the French  spirit of responsibility following the publication of the IPSOS survey relating to a mechanism for the prevention of piracy of cultural works on the Internet. This plan is part of a bill that will  soon be submitted to the Council of Ministers. It follows agreements signed on the 23 November 2007 at the Elysée Palace, in the presence of the President of the Republic, by 47 businesses and organisations representing cinema, music and television, and also by all the Internet service providers, who the Minister has compelled to fulfil the agreement.

Firstly, the Minister revealed that 74% of French people are in favour of the mechanism of the bill, which would, in the first instance, consist of sending numerous educational advertisement messages to Internet users who use their Internet connection to pirate works. Then, in the case of this behaviour being repeated, the temporary suspension of Internet access.

The Minister also revealed that the projected mechanism will be useful from the preventative phase, since 90% of French people would stop downloading after two advertisements.

Christine Albanel emphasised that the results are perfectly in line with studies carried out by other countries. She also reinforced that a study completed on Internet users in Great Britain – a country which envisages implementing a plan comparable to that of France – showed that 70% of Internet users would stop downloading after receiving one advertisement message and 90% after receiving the second. In the United States, 70% of Internet users stop after the reception of the first advertisement message, 85-90% after receiving a second and 97% following the third advertisement.

Christine Albanel concluded that the French people have understood the spirit of this future law, which holds education as a priority and limits the restrictions to simple temporary Internet connection suspensions, reserved for hardened fraudsters. This study also shows the adherence of the majority of French people to the defence of the right of the author, without which ‘creation’ would have its existence threatened, against those who support openly the law of the jungle and permissiveness on the Internet.

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/index-com.html