Illegal downloading in the UK by Michelle Arthurton

PART ONE

Big news in the United Kingdom.  The British government got 6 of the 7 ISP's in Britain to agree to work to stop the illegal downloading of music.

Hard core file sharers could see their broadband connections slowed down, under measures proposed by the British government.

The consultation document proposed that hard core file sharers could have technical measures imposed, such as "traffic management or filtering and marking of legitimate content to facilitate identification".

How will this work? (1) ISPs adopt a code of self regulation to prevent the government from doing it for them. (2) labels will continue with their education campaign to prop up the value of music.  (3) ISPs will send out thousands of letters every week to suspected infringers.  (4)  steps will be taken to deal with repeat infringers (the UK does not want to take after France's "3 strikes" proposal).  (5) customers will be pointed to legal alternatives, which could be a new generation of music service formed in partnerships between labels and ISPs.

ISPs have been fighting this for years.  Also worth noting is that conversations are ongoing between record labels and ISPs in the UK right now to legalize file sharing in some way.

PART TWO

Follow up to illegal downloading in the UK

    * It is being said that the British government are planning to introduce a tax for downloaders  30 GBP per year, to the folks who are illegally downloading music from the internet.

    * Some say that the tax is not really going to happen though, as one of the heads of the ISPs thinks this is an intrusion of privacy. But those who are using P2P will have their internet slowed down.

    * There are so many articles contradicting this subject.  I also read that letters have already started going out as of last week on this matter.

    * The BPI sent out a letter to the Business Minister that kind of undermines the whole thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/31/digitalmedia.downloads?gusrc=rss&feed=media