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www.nytimes.com/2012/02/ ··· chnologyStudies show that the appeal of piracy has waned in France since the so-called three-strikes law, hailed by the music and movie industries and hated by advocates of an open Internet, went into effect. Digital sales, which were slow to get started in France, are growing. Music industry revenues are starting to stabilize.
A report commissioned by Hadopi, which has a budget of €11 million and employs 70 people, showed a sharp decline in file-sharing since the system was put in place.
A separate study by researchers at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh suggests that Hadopi has given a lift to legal downloads via the Apple iTunes music store. Since the spring of 2009, when the debate over the measure was raging, through mid-2011, iTunes sales rose much more strongly in France than in other European countries.
the study says the case for a link was bolstered by the fact that sales of musical genres that suffer from high levels of piracy, like hip-hop, rose much more than sales of low-piracy genres, like Christian and classical music. The researchers calculated that Hadopi resulted in an extra €13.8 million a year worth of iTunes music sales in France.
Several other countries, including South Korea and New Zealand, have adopted French-style anti-piracy measures. In South Korea, where the law took effect in 2009, music sales rose 12 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 2011, according to the music industry federation. Sales in other countries mostly continued to decline. Music sales rose 10 percent in Sweden in 2009, for example, after the country tightened up its copyright laws, bringing previously lax standards into line with E.U. norms.
