Thousands of people have signed the Don’t Disconnect Us petition to overturn internet piracy legislation after Stephen Fry used Twitter to alert people to the perils of the proposed law.

Within 24 hours of Fry’s tweet on Sunday morning the petition, originally lodged by Andrew Heaney of broadband company TalkTalk, had passed 8,000 – more than the number of people who signed a petition to give Gurkhas the right to stay in the UK.

Fry claims to have introduced Lord Mandelson – whose Digital Economy Bill contains the anti-piracy measures – to the internet when he showed him his first website in 1997.

You can sign the petition against the filesharing proposals on the Number 10 website.