LONDON, England (AP) - People who repeatedly download copyright-protected films and music could have their Internet connection cut off under proposed laws the British government unveiled yesterday to tackle illegal file-sharing.
Treasury Minister Stephen Timms said that previous plans, which would only have restricted users' broadband speed, did not go far enough. That potential punishment remains under the new proposal, but is accompanied by the possibility of blocking offenders' access to download sites as well as banning them from the Internet altogether.
Civil-rights groups and Internet service providers criticised the proposal as unnecessarily restricting users' rights without doing much to tackle online piracy.
The French government initially defied that ruling when it passed a similar cutoff law in May, but a French court later ruled that only a judge could allow Internet access to be cut off. French lawmakers are working on a new bill.
Still, France has already created what may be the first government agency to track and punish online pirates. The earliest a British ban could be put into place is 2011.