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Sarko's palace 'illegally ripped Ben Stiller film'

Clea Caulcutt
Clea Caulcutt - [email protected]
Sarko's palace 'illegally ripped Ben Stiller film'
Photo: Jiyang Chen/EPP

The French presidential palace is accused of illegally downloading copyrighted material.  A 21-year-old IT student says he has traced IP addresses used to illegally download material all the way back to the Elysée Palace.

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It’s an embarassing accusation against the French president. Nicolas Sarkozy campaigns for the defence of copyrighted material and says he wants to strengthen Internet anti-piracy laws in France.

But Sarkozy may first have to take a sterner approach to his staff’s internet habits. A young IT student from La Rochelle in the west of France, says he has traced Elysee Palace IP addresses illegally donwloading on the Internet in an interview with daily Le Parisien.

On his blog NikiPik.com, the anonymous student writes that Sarkozy’s staff have illegally downloaded the movies Tower Heist, with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, The Change-Up with Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, and animation film Arthur Christmas.

NikoPik.com author says he obtained the presidential IP addresses by entering the web address www.elysee.fr in the site Whois.org. He then entered the IP addresses into the site Youhavedownloaded.com which traces illegally downloads. He alleges five IP addresses of the Elysee Palace appeared as having been used to illegally download material.

The Elysee Palace has denied allegations from NikoPik.org.

French authorities have adopted strict anti-piracy laws under Sarkozy. The agency Hadopi is in charge of tracing illegal downloads on peer-to-perr services. Web users caught downloading copyrighted material face fines and can see their internet link disconnected.

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