After the New Zealand government dropped plans to force ISPs to cut off repeat piracy offenders following a mass campaign via social networking sites, France’s online activists are trying the same thing in face of a similar proposal.

SEE ALSO: EU Strikes Off France’s Three Strikes, But French Will Go Ahead Anyway

The country’s National Assembly is considering a “graduated response” law that would cut off users for a year after their third recorded online copyright infringement. As Business Week reports, tens of thousands of websites and users have joined a “black-out” by changing their web pages or personal avatars to black in a protest organised by civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net).

The legislation has already been passed in the French Senate with a landslide majority of 297 to 15, though it faces greater opposition in the lower house particularly from opposition Socialists. The law was debated last Thursday and is likely to come back before the Assembly at the end of the month or early April. The European Parliament last year voted for legislation that would force ISPs to go to court before cutting off customers, but there’s little yet stopping France proceeding with its own, domestic three strikes law.