The entertainment industry has been placing immense pressure on global governments to enact "three strike" rules requiring that ISPs filter pirated content from their networks, and boot third time offenders. This of course raises all manner of questions, from the unreliability of ISP piracy detection and DMCA letter notification systems, to who -- assuming Santa isn't real -- keeps the master naughty list offenders who float between ISPs. None of this appears to worry the French, who this week signed off on a new three strikes law. In this case, the second strike isn't too gentle: offenders would lose Internet access for a full year.Too bad, so sad, mon ami? It's hard to think that ISPs, many of whom can't even bill and support paying customers correctly, will ever be able to effectively identify, track and punish users on their own networks, much less coordinate with other ISPs to police repeat offenders. The potential for screwups and financial waste with this kind of law is simply immense.