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.