Sadly, the Hadopi story is not over. The political story revolves around a promise made by our president to famous french pop stars and actors, many of whom supported his candidacy. The view of the government is therefore that whereas the constitutional court invalidated the process put in place by the Hadopi law to punish piracy, it didn’t invalidate the principle of punishing them.

As a consequence, the government is exploring ways to make copyright infringements an offense punished by a systematic fine just like road infractions. This would (if agreed to by the constitution) allow the government to push forward with a process that doesn’t need the involvement of a judge and court, which is the core aspect that they want to push forward.

Interestingly, as the UK government is now going down that route fast, British telcos and ISPs have been very vocal against the intended procedure whereas, with the exception of Free/Iliad in France the telecom players stayed mostly silent on the issue. Even more strangely, Orange in the UK is very vocal against three-strikes whereas Orange in France gave lip support to the government’s plans…

You can read more of my own thinking at the time here: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017399148027573387600%3Akffnbwih8rw&ie=UTF-8&q=hadopi&sa=Search