French ISP Refuses To Send Out Infringement Notices

An anonymous reader writes "Last month it was clear that French ISPs were not at all happy about the whole three strikes Hadopi process in France. Now that the 'notice' process has started, with Hadopi sending out notices to 10,000 people per day, it's hit a bit of a stumbling block. The French ISP named 'Free' has apparently figured out a bit of a loophole that allows it to not send out notices and protect its subscribers. Specifically, the law requires ISPs to reveal user info to Hadopi, but it does not require them to alert their users. But, the law does say that only users who are alerted by their ISP can be taken to court to be disconnected. In other words, even if Free is handing over user info, so long as it doesn't alert its users (which the law does not mandate), then those users cannot be kicked off the internet via Hadopi."

Comments

10,000 users a day...

[Anonymous Coward]

At what percentage of the population breaking a given law does the law become stupid to have around at all?

they only send 100 notices this first time

[zproc]

Hadopi's required / they say they need to send 25 000 notices per day I believe, but actually send 100 for this time. Also, "Free" handed the IPs on paper instead of providing the data digitally like every other provider. And yes another provider urged the governement to act to make "Free" comply as they sensed "Free" was gaining a little bit more popularity with this trick.

Re:they only send 100 notices this first time

[Cinder6]

They should take it one step further than paper: run the user info through a CAPTCHA generator so that it can't simply be scanned. Claim something about security to justify it.

Re:Where are the parents?

[evilandi]

I'm guessing you've not visited France much.

Farmers and fishermen use loopholes in the law to block entire interstates or major ferry ports for weeks on end.

There is a deep and wide cultural history of using legal loopholes to embellish protest.