Europe’s digital chief hopes France can liberalize digital copyright

The lawmaker leading Europe’s digital agenda initiatives is hoping France can liberalize its digital copyright regime, after introducing a policy to warn and disconnect illegal content downloaders.

France’s Hadopi public agency, created to administer sending of warnings to alleged freeloaders, sent 755,015 first warnings to ISP subscribers in its first 14 months of operation. But now it is also conducting a review of whether France’s underpinning copyright law itself needs some technical reform. European Commission digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes says she discovered the review, which she calls a “pioneering work,” “with pleasure” because: “Combating piracy is not done only by coercive measures. You are all, in fact, aware that I am not a fan of measures that punish individuals or families by cutting off internet access. The best way to combat piracy is to encourage the legal supply to satisfy the legitimate expectations of users. . So we must be very ambitious when it comes to creating a regulatory framework that promotes the development of legal offers online.”