Warning emails will be sent out by mid-October to people in France who have made illegal downloads, says anti-internet piracy body Hadopi.  The new authority was supposed to be ready to act in April, then June, then September, but it has been held up by legal complications.

Now the body says that it has sent its first batch of requests to ISPs, asking them to reveal identities of Internet users found to have illegally downloaded files such as music or films. Their IP addresses are held by Hadopi, but the ISPs have the names and addresses these correspond to. By law they can be fined E1,500 per IP address if they refuse to hand over details in eight days.

Reports say all major ISPs; Free, Orange, Numéricable and SFR, have received requests concerning several hundred IP addresses.   The IP addresses of people who have allegedly used illegal file sharing sites have been identified by surveillance firms working for copyright holders and passed to Hadopi.

Categories: Articles, Broadband, ISP, Regulation