BBC NEWS | Technology | France unveils anti-piracy plan

(((I know that the shareware/FLOSS crowd is gonna freak out about this adventure, but I suspect that France may be doing the rest of the world a favor by turning themselves into the lab rat for harsh nationalist
DRM. I'd say the chances are ninety percent that this turns into a bitter debacle for all concerned – but just maybe, the MPAA/RIAA
contingency are right, and everybody else's cultural enterprises will collapse entirely in a welter of p2p piracy!!! And then, maybe, ten years from now, while the rest of us are stuck watching crap YouTube snippets and bad long-tail freeware sci-fi novels, FRANCE will pwn all the movie directors, novelists and musicians who matter!)))

(((Can you name even one French creative-artist who globally matters right now? I'd say Michel Houellebecq is pretty good, and Marie Darrieussecq is pretty happening too, but except for the fact that their names end in -ecq, they're not exactly a groundswell.
France survived the Minitel, maybe it'll thrive through a weird DRM scheme!
Seems to me they have at least something to gain by this bold experiment and not a whole lot to lose.)))

Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | France unveils anti-piracy plan.

(...)French web users caught pirating movies or music could soon be thrown offline.

"Those illegally sharing files will face the loss of their net access thanks to a newly-created anti-piracy body granted the wide-ranging powers.

"The anti-piracy body comes out of a deal agreed by France's music and movie makers and its net firms.

"The group who brokered the deal said the measures were intended to curb casual piracy rather than tackle large scale pirate groups.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the deal was a "decisive moment for the future of a civilised internet". (((Sarko always says stuff like this. How come BOTH of France's major politicians had spectacular divorces right in the damn campaign? I'd forgive the guy everything if he would go and marry Segolene Royal right now. Even if they just went on a *date* – would that rock, or what?)))

Net firms will monitor what their customers are doing and pass on information about persistent pirates to the new independent body. Those identified will get a warning and then be threatened with either being cut off or suspended if they do not stop illegal file-sharing.

The agreement between net firms, record companies, film-makers and government was drawn up by a special committee created to look at the problem of the net and cultural protection....