UK ISPs To Crackdown On Music Piracy

via Gizmodo


You may have seen Mamma Mia and feel an urge to download the entire Abba back catalogue from your nearest torrent site but, Whoa There! - park those Dancing Shoes because you may find yourself blacklisted and in receipt of a hamstrung Internet connection for your trouble.

The UK's Big Six ISPs have agreed a plan with the British music industry - brokered by the government - to curb music piracy in a big way. According to the new plan - to be revealed in full later today - service providers will send warning letters to thousands, and maybe tens of thousands, of homes across the UK telling them they have been found illegally downloading copyrighted material.

I can see a lot of confused parents looking at these letters - and their teenagers - trying to figure out just who's been downloading Slipknot albums on the sly.

If that fails, then sanctions are being proposed that will see offenders' Net speeds severely curtailed [no more big files] and also subject to 'traffic filtering' which will see increased monitoring of their file downloads to check for unpaid for content. It is estimated that 6.5 million UK folk downloaded music illegally last year.

The Big Six - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse - have agreed to this plan because the government has promised to shelve even more Draconian measures that would have seen a '3 strikes and you're out' rule introduced, where persistent offenders would have their broadband connection cut-off.

Former Undertones singer and now chief exec of British Music Rights told The Times:

"This is something of a step into the unknown for the Internet providers, music industries and ministers. But we can't go on without it - no business can survive after losing as much revenue as the music industry has."

So, has Big Brother finally landed for the online music industry here?