In a new interview this week with the French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur (French), the new French minister of culture slammed Hadopi, France’s controversial anti-piracy regime, and seemed to indicate that it will be shut down.

"I do not know what will become of [Hadopi], but one thing is clear: Hadopi has not fulfilled its mission of developing legal content offerings," Aurélie Filippetti told the magazine this week.

Filippetti recently named Pierre Lescure, the former CEO of Canal+, a major French satellite channel, as the head of a commission to look at the challenges of digital media with respect to French culture.

"In financial terms, [spending] €12 million euros ($14.86 million) and 60 agents—that’s expensive [just] to send a million e-mails," she continued.

"Finally, the suspension of Internet access seems to be a disproportionate penalty given the intended goal. But this will all be examined by the Lescure Commission. In the meantime, with respect to budgetary efforts, I’m going to ask that Hadopi’s funds be significantly reduced for the rest of 2012. I prefer to reduce the finances of [agencies] whose utility is not proven. In September, I will announce the details of these budgetary decisions."

Hollande campaigned on ending Hadopi

Hadopi, which was set up under President Nicolas Sarkozy’s administration, has remained intact since François Hollande's new administration won in the April 2012 election. The month before Sarkozy’s departure, Hadopi released a report claiming that it had been successful in reducing French traffic on peer-to-peer networks, although France’s entertainment industry continued to see financial declines.

Hadopi is set up as an escalating three-strikes model, which would culminate in an Internet user being disconnected for a month. The French government's agency never quite got to that point, and now seems even more unlikely to get there.

During the presidential campaign this spring, Hollande had said that he wanted to replace Hadopi with something that he called "Act 2 of the Cultural Exception," a reference to a 20-year-old provision that France successfully inserted into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), allowing cultural products, such as art, music, film, and literature to be treated differently from other commercial products. Effectively, the "cultural exception" makes it legal for France to maintain its system of quotas and subsidies for its domestic cultural industry.