As one of the pioneers of a '3 strikes' mechanism for dealing with P2P piracy, France is moving closer to its full implementation. In order to warn and punish alleged file-sharers, it will first be necessary to monitor them whilst engaged in infringement. The scope of that monitoring has just been confirmed.

As reported earlier this year, anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard has been chosen by the entertainment industry to track and report illegal file-sharers in France. The company, previously better known for its pollution of file-sharing networks with fake data, will be providing evidence for use under the country’s 3 strikes ‘Hadopi’ legislation.

From the sidelines of a conference, Thierry Desurmont from rights collecting group SACEM has just confirmed the scope of TMG’s upcoming monitoring regime.

TMG’s tracking systems are able to monitor several different file-sharing networks, but the priority will undoubtedly fall on BitTorrent, eD2K (eDonkey/eMule) and Gnutella (e.g LimeWire). Fears that TMG would be monitoring so-called cyberlocker sites (e.g Rapidshare) were not true. Even if they could, the company does not have permission to do so. TMG will concentrate purely on P2P.

“We reached an agreement with TMG and [the company] will monitor the IP addresses used for illicit file-sharing from a basic reference work,” explained Thierry Desurmont from rights collecting group SACEM.

“There is the music industry and the audiovisual sector. For the music industry (SCPP, SPPF, SACEM, SDRM), there will be a base consisting of 5,000 works [from a back catalogue, described as ‘golds’] and 5000 which will be for renewal. For broadcasting, the base formed by [anti-piracy group] ALPA will be 200 works.”

The monitoring process will see TMG working up to capacity, tracking an eye-watering 18,250,000 infringements per year – that’s 50,000 per day, every day.

“Our agreements provide that TMG should be able to provide 25,000 incidents per day for music, 25,000 for audiovisual. This goal will be preceded by a phase of increasing power to calibrate the process,” explained Desurmont.

Quite how the paperwork side of the operation will hold up to such lofty goals remains to be seen. The French will be hoping that the initial ‘first and second strike’ warnings work or the judges dealing with the fines and disconnections could be in for a hell of a lot of overtime.