The music and movie industries have been making a concerted attempt to introduce a "three strikes" rule for Net users in many countries simultaneously — pressuring ISPs to throw their customers offline, possibly permanently, if the rightsholders report that they have been infringing.

The response by national ISPs and governments has varied:

in the same week as Japanese ISPs declared they would voluntarily follow such a scheme, Sweden's Ministers for Justice and Culture came out strongly against shutting down subscribers in their country.

The furthest ahead in its plans is France. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

(IFPI) lobbied for France's "Olivennes Report," an agreement brokered last year between the ISPs, rightsholders and the French government to enforce such a system. Denis Olivennes, the author of the report, is also the director of FNAC, France's largest record shop chain.

The Swedish government, in rejecting "three strikes", noted that shutting down an Internet subscription was "a wide-reaching measure that could have serious repercussions in society". That's the kind of wider policy consideration that France and Japan needs to consider. This is more than a fight between the entertainment and broadband industries:

This is about infrastructure, and citizen's gel viagra access and freedoms online. But right now, some countries seem to be falling over themselves to discover its disadvantages — without any true investigation into what will happen to their citizens or their networks if they do.

For this complete post by EFF International Outreach Coordinator Danny O'Brien:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/03/three-strikes-three-countries