Why do the French have such a hard-on for copyright enforcement? (Honest question)
The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. So I'd argue that the French have a love-affair with traditional publishing, and traditional publishing loves draconian copyright rules. The whole thing is almost a culture war for the French people's soul by-proxy.
This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. Most french researchers are perfectly happy using these sites, and dislike strongly the draconian schemes of scientific journal publishers (which publish texts mostly in english). Several people are pushing for french university libraries to stop paying subscriptions to journals and give all that money directly to scihub. Yet, these initiatives are always blocked at higher levels.