It's hard to engage in file-sharing if you don't have any Internet access. That's the threat behind a new memorandum of understanding between the government, ISPs, and Big Content in France that would see repeat P2P infringers lose their Internet connections. In exchange, the French music industry would make its French-language archive freely available available sans DRM. In addition, DVDs would be on store shelves within six months of a film's theatrical release, instead of the current seven and a half months.

The proposal is backed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and arose from the findings of a independent review commission appointed by Sarkozy shortly after taking office. That commission was headed up by the chairman of French consumer electronics retailer FNAC, Denis Olivennes.

Given his position, it's not surprising that Olivennes is no friend to ISPs and fans of P2P. He recently authored La gratuité, c'est le vol: Quand le piratage tue la culture, in which he argued that P2P not only harmed retailers, as well as the music and film industries, but also directly impacted French culture by reducing the amount of tax income from movies and cable television. P2P users are killing French culture, he says. It should be no surprise, then, that the plan's trade-offs fall almost entirely in the favor of Big Content to the detriment of just about everyone else, including people who don't use P2P software.

Like it or not, the total cost of Internet service will rise because French ISPs have signed on to the plan. They will now spend time and (tax) money enforcing copyright on their networks via expensive deep packet inspection (DPI) software that will monitor traffic on their networks and look for copyrighted content. Subscribers detected illicitly sharing or downloading copyrighted material will receive warnings, requiring additional administrative overhead. If the behavior continues, then Internet access would be guillotined. Most of this will be carried out by a government-funded independent authority overseen by a judge.

The IFPI was effusive in its praise for the proposal. "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 in a statement. "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."

French consumer advocates aren't as excited. UFC Que Choisir, which has attacked both Apple and the music industry over DRM restrictions in the past while applauding another law that calls for the end of DRM lock-ins, called the agreement "very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, antieconomic and against the tide of the digital age," in a statement seen by Reuters.

The proposal looks to be an early Christmas present for the movie and music industries—and a major scrooging for French consumers. For the first time in either Europe or North America, Big Content will be able to offload the tiresome and expensive work of copyright enforcement to ISPs and the commission called for by the law. If the proposal is approved by the French parliament next year, proponents suggest it would go a long way towards slowing the torrent of P2P traffic to a trickle.

Meanwhile, French Internet users will have all of their traffic subject to monitoring by ISPs to ensure that content is not being pirated; that's not good for privacy. And as is always the case with such technological measures, there's always the potential for legitimate content, including the increasing amount of legitimate P2P traffic, to be caught up in a copyright enforcement driftnet. Sure, consumers are thrown a few bones—DRM-free archives, faster DVD releases, and no more massive fines for copyright infringement—but the tradeoff is harsh since it comes with a giant government subsidy for Big Content's interests, paid for in lost privacy and an expensive oversight organization.