[xijingpooh]

France isn't a lot better in this regard. You need a permit from the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel to operate a public open wlan. They had a three strike policy for sharing infridging content but they just gave up for some reason. Maybe they finally realised it's a waste of public servant time to go after people in the benefit of a few corporations.

[maeln]

Big copyright holders hold a lot of political power in France. That's why France has been one of the country in the E.U fighting the most against piracy and taxing pretty much everything you can store music file on (we used to buy blank CD/DVD in germany or spain because they where close to 10 time cheaper).

The three strike / hadopi bullshit was clearly a political move to satisfy the biggest copyright holder, a lot of it was completely unenforceable and even unconstitutional from the start. In the end, very few people even got to the third strike, and they couldn't even do what they "promised" (forbidding the person from having an internet connection) and had to go through costly court procedure just to give fines in the end. It was just a machine to burn public money for the miniscule benefit of a few. It died very fast because nobody wanted to try to make this bullshit actually work and burn even more money when they have to get re-elected.