French reject controversial plan to crack down on illegal downloaders

French politicians have unexpectedly rejected a bill that would have cut off the internet connections of anyone found to be repeatedly downloading music or videos without paying for them. The legislation would also have led to the creation of the world's first state surveillance system on web pirates. The fiercely contested bill was rejected today in a sparsely attended vote in the National Assembly. The bill had been championed by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife, the singer Carla Bruni, has long advocated a crackdown on piracy. On Monday, film director Steven Soderbergh urged US authorities to draw inspiration from the French bill in their fight against piracy. Under the proposed legislation, new powers would have been granted to music and film companies to enable them to monitor internet users and report illegal downloads to a new copyright protection agency. Anyone found to have broken the law would have been traced via their IP (internet protocol) address and handed up to three warnings before their connection was severed for up to a year. Offenders would have had to keep paying for their internet connection despite it having been cut off. Despite the approval of the French recording industry and prominent musicians, including Johnny Hallyday, some attacked the measure. Civil liberties campaigners and members of the Socialist party said the new surveillance powers were tantamount to "the criminalisation of an entire generation". Others had said it could end up punishing the wrong people, for instance parents whose children download in secret or employers whose staff use computers at work to break the law. Breaking ranks from many of their artistic colleagues, a group of French directors and actors including Catherine Deneuve issued an open letter of protest this week. "The law comes in response to legitimate concerns which we all share–concerns that we will see our work devalued and degraded," they wrote. "However this law … is merely imposing a punitive system whose constitutionality is dubious and practicality unclear."