...hold in France?

This is a classic, "presumption of guilt" approach to what is a far more complex, and largely social problem. Arrgh!!!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071125-the-insanity-and-genius-of-frances -anti-file-sharing-plan.html

Remember kids, there is the law, norms, money and physics that regulate us. Applying software code to human problems is just about as anti-freedom as one can get. When computers make decisions, they don't care about all the little details, they just decide, and there is a bonus:

You don't get to face your accuser in court, nor do you get any sort of due process before having suffered a penalty. Nice huh?

How is this any different from putting alarm stickers on merchandise, preventin a shoplifters from stealing.

There are a lot of differences. Here are a few:

The little stickers do not present a privacy issue, like the aggressive packet filtering does.

If, one of the little stickers has a problem, is missed, etc... one's ability to leave is not inhibited. The alarm goes off, and both parties can decide what to do.

For example, say I do a receipt check, see that I have, in fact, paid in full, should the alarm go off, I can continue walking! Of course, the merchant is free to come and ask questions, or not as well.

The leaving of the store really is not the same as sending traffic on the Internet also. One could be using bittorrent to move a Linux ISO, for example. Or perhaps one has a home movie, with a title, that triggers a filter.

Either of these scenarios are valid reasons for using P2P. Should the filter go off, then that person cannot complete their task.

That's a restriction of freedom, without the state having to meet a burden of proof. Software has bugs, flaws, etc... these things more or less make it a poor enforcement system for these kinds of problems.