For now, these suggestions aren't being made policy, but Hadopi is mulling them over.

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Prevost wrote to Hadopi telling it to contact his wife about the downloads.

BBC: Rihanna

France's proposed law would create a new government agency called HADOPI to police the internet on behalf of copyright owners.

ECONOMIST: Internet regulation in France

Marie-Francoise Marais, head of Hadopi, speaking to local French newspaper Le Pays, said the agency "was mainly a mission of education, not repression".

BBC: Rihanna

First, Prevost terminated his web account after he received the first two warnings from the French agency, known as Hadopi, that seeks out pirates in France.

BBC: Rihanna

For unwittingly ignoring Hadopi's messages, Prevost received a summons to visit his local police station where he wrote a statement repeating his claim that he did not download the songs.

BBC: Rihanna

The police asked him to have the songs removed from his PC by a local firm and he took documentary evidence of this to court when he received a summons from Hadopi.

BBC: Rihanna

Hadopi was also offline, reporting "technical problems".

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The suspected offenders could be fined or have their Internet connection cut off for a year by a recently-set up state agency known as HADOPI (the High Authority for the Diffusion of Works and Protection of Internet Rights).

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Hadopi, the government organization behind the country's existing "three strikes" law, released a new report that proposes websites take a page from YouTube's book and actively monitor content by using recognition algorithms and the like to take down things that are presumed illegal.

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