French Court Fines Man Because Others Downloaded Music

The law holds the owner of the Internet connection responsible, no matter who uses it

It's been a long time coming but today the controversial French 'Hadopi' anti-piracy law has claimed its first scalp. After his account was connected to a series of previous infringements, a 40 year-old man was summoned to court today. Despite a third-party admitting that the music piracy in question was carried out by them and not the accused, the court still decided to fine the account holder.

For almost two years France has been running its controversial "3 strikes" mechanism to deal with the issue of online digital media piracy.