HideMyAss

France acts against net pirates

Absolutely, see the recent HideMyAss fiasco. At the same time though, they cannot shut down VPNs nor really monitor them too much -- that would create problems for businesses, and lose votes. Also, even acting at the EU level would leave out "rogue" states; I'm sure lots of ex-soviet states would love nothing better than kickstarting a specialized IT sector.

VPN Services That Take Your Anonymity Seriously

In NZ, we're lucky to have anonymous prepaid credit cards -- "Prezzy Cards" -- which our postal service sells.Turns out that several VPN services (I ended up using hidemyass.com) will accept them. Alongside an anonymous mail service for the actual account, it's pretty straightforward to head to an internet cafe, boot your laptop into something like Tails, and then create a completely anonymous VPN connection.Not that I'd personally go to that extent, but it's nice to know that you can achieve a reasonable degree of anonymity online.