A new research by ALPA, the French anti-piracy association, has claimed that illegal downloads in France are becoming an immense danger that could lead to a disastrous outcome for the film industry.

From November to June, the association has monitored the traffic from France with the major peer-to-peer networks based abroad and allowing these illegal downloads. The research focused on the top 100 pirated French and foreign movies, which account for 90% of downloads. In December, 536,000 daily acts of film piracy have been recorded, exceeding 14 million during that month.

Nearly 450,000 illegal downloads of recent films are made in France every day, according ALPA's first-of-its-kind study, sponsored by the Gaumont cinema chain. "We are facing a major phenomenon that can endanger the film industry and audiovisual industries. We did not expect such figures", Frederic Delacroix, general delegate of the ALPA, told Agence France Presse.

ALPA recorded that that French box-office hit Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis reached an average 9,800 downloads per day following its theater release in March 2008 and since then it has accumulated 682,000 downloads.

American films remain the most coveted by French pirates: Jumper, Cleaner and Iron Man have each been downloaded an average of 20,000 times per day.

ALPA's Delacroix has suggested an anti-piracy plan, supported by French president Nicholas Sarkozy, which would mean the disconnection from the Internet for repeat infringers (the three-strikes's rule) and which would oblige ISPs to monitor their networks rigorously for traffic of copyrighted material.

Story filed 15.09.08