You know that “why?” game that children like to play? Parents can win it sometimes — all it takes is a PhD?

(by Kate Bernauer)

It looks like France is about to lose the Internet. The Hadopi (“three strikes”) law came into force last week, and ISPs are already receiving tens of thousands of requests per day — expected to increase to approximately 150,000 per day shortly.

For those who are not caught up (rightly or wrongly) in this deluge of due-process-free banning from the Internet, US ISPs do not have to comply with more than twenty-eight such requests a month, due to the workload involved. And French law fines the ISP 1,500 Euros per day for unidentified IP addresses.

Assuming French ISPs can process numbers similar to US ones, that means they will likely be fined (as a group) approximatley one million euros every day under this law (and current conditions). A cost certain to be passed on to customers.

And that cost will grow with the backlog.

Which means that for those few Internet users left in France, their internet bill will skyrocket. Enjoy your 1,000 Euro/month Internet bill, if you can afford it.