He is a 54 year old school teacher. He is also one of the first number of people to receive multiple notices from HADOPI for copyright infringement. He also doesn’t know how to download pirated copies of copyrighted works and says that he was the victim of WiFi hacking.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Throughout our coverage of the three strikes law being developed over the world, we’ve noted repeatedly that false accusations will happen. It is very likely that people who don’t download copyrighted works will find themselves disconnected from the internet because a number of these system being put in place in different countries is guilty until proven innocent.
That is what makes this, perhaps, one of the most predictable stories we’ve covered all year. A 54 year old school teacher is now finding himself with multiple notices from HADOPI for copyright infringement. The problem? He never downloaded copyrighted works online. Now, he is going to be fighting an organization that only started issuing these notices back in October of last year. According to Numerama (Google translated, original), he says he is even prepared to take this issue to the European Justice court if need be to clear his name.
The sad part of all of this is that he is fighting this at great expense. Not only will he fight these charges, he will have to move from the countryside at his own expense should the matter be escalated to going to the European court.
How did this happen? Apparently, his internet connection was hacked. After the second false accusation, the school teacher apparently took steps to secure it. Apparently, his efforts proved fruitless after hackers still managed to break in to his internet connection and get caught downloading Iron Man 2. He told Numerama that he is being accused of downloading that movie and he doesn’t even know how it is done.
This is really no surprise whatsoever. With such a highly publicized new law and organization, people were bound to start covering their tracks by doing things including breaking in to other people’s WiFi connection and using their access to the internet to avoid detection. The result? Innocent people will be accused of copyright infringement. This is clearly what is happening here and I guarantee that this secondary level school teacher won’t be the last either.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
