Flemish Region launches its own Hadopi version

France has been faced with a serious fight for the past year that concerned a Law dubbed “Hadopi“, and which comprised a very controversial approach to curb piracy consisting of a graduated response (or “Three strikes, you’re out”), whereby repeat offenders would be warned and eventually disconnected from the Internet.

The BJ has been told that this approach has inspired the Flemish government in Belgium in launching its own graduated response approach called “Fladopi”. In this version, if a Flemish minister refuses the nomination of a specific candidate mayor (“bourgmestre”) three times in a row, it is considered good practice to put forward another candidate. It is unclear what form of disconnection could be applied should such “best practice” be ignored but at least the Flemish government showed that the time gap between adopting Fladopi and sending the first letters was a lot shorter than in France, were the first Hadopi warnings have still not been issued.