After a quite long silence, we “open” the new year with two important news:

1. In the US, on one hand, the SOPA, the new American Law on Copyright that will be discussed next 24 January, is creating a real storm…
2. In France, on the other hand, seems that the Hadopi, the famous French
   Authority on copyright’s protection, risks to be abolished.

It seems quite a “U-turn”.

If the first case seemed to be controversial from the beginning, on the second item, concerning the Hadopi, this news appeares really surprising. Only several weeks ago French newspapers announced that the Haute Authority wanted to engage itself to a “second step” against piracy. So what happened???

First of all there have been the “gaffe” made by the men of the RIAA, fonographic
majors and French governative organization catched in the act of downloading
and sharing illegal contents by TorrentFreak. Then, even if first notice were
sent to over 650.000 people (in a year), the real risk of disconnection interested only about 60 people. Anyway the socialist deputy Didier Malthus, that will be soon in the Board of the Hadopy, declared that “repression doesn’t work”.

Concerning the US SOPA waiting for the decision of the 24 January, we can only say that in these last days the activists for digital freedom as well as the “over the Top” are organizing a strike (a black out of their own web sites) for the 23 January against the Sopa that they’re afraid could possibly become a censorship on the Internet.