France's "three strikes" copyright enforcement law has gotten the backing of the country's Cabinet, putting it on track to be implemented next January. Under the plan, ISPs will be forced to heavily monitor Internet traffic for illegal activity, and enforcement will be overseen by a new state agency called HADOPI (High Authority for Copyright Protection and Dissemination of Works on the Internet).

The plan, announced last November by President Nicolas Sarkozy, will yank the Internet access of those caught sharing copyrighted content via P2P after they've been caught three times (the first two times would involve warnings at various levels). Their access would be cut off for up to a year, which lawmakers hope will be enough to dissuade other would-be downloaders from hopping on the pirate ship. "It takes a preventive and educational approach," France's Culture Minister, Christine Albanel, told the Times Online.

The IFPI has long praised France's plans to turn ISPs into copyright police. "This is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far," said IFPI CEO John Kennedy when the plan was first announced. "By requiring ISPs to play a role in the fight against piracy, President Sarkozy has set an example to others of how to ensure that the creative industries remain strong in difficult markets so that they can remain major economic and cultural contributors to society."

France has indeed set an example, as a number of other countries are now considering implementing similar laws. Lawmakers in the UK began considering the country's own three-strikes law in February of this year, closely followed by Australia. Each time, the IFPI praised the moves, reiterating that "ISP cooperation" has been top priority for the recording industry for a number of years now.

ISPs aren't all that thrilled about the prospect of being held responsible for monitoring all content passing through their pipes, though. Deep-packet inspection is extremely costly, argue industry groups, in addition to still being somewhat ineffective. "ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope," said UK trade group Internet Service Provider Association in February. Even without legislation, the record industry has already begun pressuring ISPs into complying with its requests. For example, Virgin Media, one of the UK's largest ISPs, recently agreed to forward British music industry nastygrams to subscribers suspected of illegal file-swapping.

Of course, aside from the intense labor and costs involved in implementing such a policy, users will also lose much of the privacy they have come to expect from using the Internet, especially while at home. With all the infrastructure set up to monitor Internet traffic for P2P infractions, France won't have to reach much further if it ever wants to enact a sweeping surveillance bill like the one recently approved in Sweden.

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