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It seems to me the cost benefit analysis for this law suggests that every time someone is punished by it the result is a pyrrhic victory. The discussion to this point has been all about money, but what is the social cost of this approach to digital theft? The obvious purpose of this kind of enforcement is to make people afraid. I can imagine a world where enforcement is perfect and only the guilty are accused but that is not the world any of us lives in.
Granted that the French legal system is different than the Anglo-Saxon one that I'm familiar with, but I think there must be a better way to deal with the problem. I was happy to see that educating the people about digital property is part of what they are doing. It does shift the cost from the government to the businesses that want to get the word out so I understand that those businesses will not like this approach as much. And I certainly think that large scale and "for profit" theft is a government responsibility, but I know it is unwise public policy to try to make the people afraid to use the resources their communities provide or try to make them mistrust their government.
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