In a narrowly won vote, the French National Assembly passed a draft law that means that illegal downloaders will be disconnected from the internet.

The French policy on piracy has drawn global attention and seems to confirm the hard line stance taken by Lord Mandelson, here in the UK.

The French Socialist Party will appeal to the French Constitutional Court, the highest in France, in the hope that this draft law – like an earlier version – will be declared unconstitutional.

The proposed legislation operates under a three strikes system similar to that mooted by Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report. 

Consumer groups in France have warned that innocent people may get punished.    In addition, the European Parliament is currently considering whether depriving people of their internet access is a breach of human rights.

A UK based digital music information and strategy company, Music Ally, has published finding s from research into the digital music consumption habits of 1000 respondents.  

• The percentage of people who regularly (i.e. every month) download music from illegal file-sharing sources has declined from 22% in December 2007 to 17% in January 2009
• The 14-18 year old age group saw the steepest decline, where it fell from 42% to 26% over the same period
• However the percentage of music fans who have ever file-shared has increased, rising from 28% in December 2007 to 31% in January 2009
• More music fans regularly share burned CDs and bluetooth tracks to each other than file-share
• The comparative volume of pirated tracks to legally purchased tracks has halved since the end of 2007
• The ratio of tracks obtained from file-sharing compared to tracks obtained from legal purchases on an ongoing basis was 4:1.  In January 2009 this had narrowed to just 2:1 
• There are now more UK music fans regularly buying single track downloads (19%)
• Those filesharing single tracks (17%) every month and those sharing albums regularly (13%) remains higher than those purchasing digital albums (10%)
• 65% of teens are streaming music regularly
• 31% of 14-18s  listen to streamed music on their computer every day
• 18% of music fans overall listen to streamed music on their PCs

During 2010 the measures proposed by the recent Digital Britain report will be introduced.  Internet users suspected of piracy will get a warning from their ISP, followed by information release to rights holders for court action to be commenced against repeat offenders.   The ultimate sanction will be technical measures like reduced broadband speeds for those that still fail to comply or persistently offend.