Mr. Bumble was right. The (French Internet) law is an ass

A new study carried out by the University of Rennes and focused on the illegal downloading of online music and video in France reveals that it grew by three per cent between September and December 2009 - despite the noisy and bad-tempered passing of a contentious law designed to outlaw the practice.

The report shows that 30.3 per cent of all Web users in France illegally downloaded content over the quarter. Over the period 1 July to 30 September it was 29.5 per cent.

That gives some indication of just how intractable a problem Internet piracy really is and exposes the paucity of imagination in those who have dedicated themselves to it's eradication. They might as well try to stop the Seine flowing to the sea by damming it with some of Marie Antoinette's famous cake.

The law as it stands is unworkable and practically unenforceable. OK when it is applied (and the first warning messages to presumed miscreants - and that is what they will be, presumed - won't be sent until this summer at the earliest) there will no doubt be a some well-publicised test cases where a few individuals will be cut off from the Internet and cast into the outer darkness "pour encourager les autres" but, as the leaders of the campaign to get the law repealed say, "They can't jail the lot of us." And "they" can't.

What the Rennes University work throws into stark relief is the feebleness and structural shortcomings of an ill-conceived piece of legislation that was foisted on the government by intense lobbying by vested interests within the content industry. It was conceived in a panic and rushed through without any real analysis or understanding on the part of the legislators of the way the Internet actually works.

That's because Hadopi 2 only targets P2P file sharing networks and completely ignores streaming sites.