The UN has recently come out against Britain, France, and New Zealand’s three strike laws that have been put in place to stop file sharing of copyrighted files. In these countries if you are caught illegally sharing files on three occasions, you are barred from internet access. The UN deemed this a human right abuse stating that cutting someone off from having internet access for a copyright infringement is “disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right.”

The UN has a lot to deal with when it comes to different counties and their internet policies, with countries like Iran and China actively trying to filter the internet from its users. But they have a specific interest in Britain, France and New Zealand because they are all major countries that have a democracy, but enforce a much harsher punishment for copyright infringements than most modern countries. If the UN gets their way, it would set the precedent that internet access is now considered a human right, a grey area that has been long debated.