French Parliament Tosses Out Net Piracy Bill

France's National Assembly on Thursday tossed out the country's proposed HADOPI law -- a three-strikes rule that if it had passed would have required ISPs to cut off customers' Internet access for one year if they were suspected of illegally downloading copyrighted material.

HADOPI, which is a French acronym and in English is known as the "Creation and Internet Law," would have required a graduated response by ISPs to suspected downloaders, and would also have carried fines of up to 300,000 euros (about $400,000) and a few years in prison for anyone caught trading pirated material more than twice.

The piracy law, which was widely expected to pass, according to BBC News, was rejected by a vote of 21 to 15.

The contention point in the final version was an amendment that "third-strike" users continue to pay ISPs after being cut off, according to Beta News and other blogs and news sites covering the vote.

The ways in which lawmakers and recording industry executives are attempting to combat illegal downloads have been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Europe.

In Sweden, for example, a similar bill that made it easier to prosecute illegal music, movie and other content downloaders did pass into law. But according to reports, the law's passage has since meant a 40 percent decline in Sweden's Internet traffic.

Sweden is also the site of the trial of BitTorrent service The Pirate Bay, which indexes and tracks BitTorrent files and has listed between 22 million and 25 million users since 2003. The Pirate Bay's three founders and an investor are on trial for allegedly aiding copyright infringement, and a decision is expected April 17.

In the United States, the role of ISPs in fighting piracy has also come under scrutiny lately, especially over the extent to which ISPs are working with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to root out illegal music downloaders.

While the RIAA contends it is working with ISPs like AT&T, Cox and Comcast on a graduated response system of warnings, the three ISPs have all said that they don't so much have a "deal" with the RIAA as they were continuing to warn users about suspected illegal downloading and did not plan to cut off Internet access.

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