It was passed by both France’s assembly and senate last month, but now the country’s Constitutional Court has ruled illegal a proposed law that would create an agency to warn, warn again and then disconnect anyone found illegally downloading content.

Under France’s Declaration of Rights of 1789, the court ruled the Creation Et L’Internet bill contravened citizens’ right to free speech and presumption of innocence whilst the proposed Hadopi agency didn’t have legal authority, The Reg reports. That seems to head off a grand legal struggle with the European Union, whose MEPs had steadfastly refused to let go of an amendment to a telecoms bill that would compel such agencies to get court approval before any disconnections.

Forrester music analyst Mark Mulligan writes: “This isn’t the end of the road by any means - in fact, there’s every chance it will end up implemented….some time.” But by that time the piracy genie could be even further out of his bottle: “This is in microcosm the history of file sharing: every time the industry finally catches up with file sharing via courts and legislation, the problem has moved on.  This was exactly the process with Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) and Kazaa.”

In the UK, the draft Digital Britain advocated warning illegal downloaders and suggested technical measures like bandwidth throttling but outgoing culture secretary Andy Burnham all but ruled out disconnections.

(Photo: Brocco Lee, some rights reserved)

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