The French Government has backtracked on the law which allowed repeat copyright infringers to be disconnected from the Internet.

A review by a nine-member panel on policies for French entertainment industries in the digital age concluded that the three-strikes mechanism had failed to benefit authorized services as promised. It recommended that the ultimate sanction of Internet disconnections for infringers should be abolished.

In response to that recommendation, the Ministry of Culture published an official decree that removed the additional misdemeanor punishable by suspension of access to a communication service. However, fines of up to EUR1,500 remain in place, reports TorrentFreak.