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Big six sign internet piracy deal
Friday, 25 July 2008
Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk
The UK’s six biggest broadband providers have signed a deal with the music industry to combat online piracy.
The deal, which was brokered by the Government will see hundreds of thousands of “informative letters” sent out to broadband users who illegally share music on the internet and heavy offenders could see their connections throttled in a bid to stop their downloading.
BT (www.BT.com), Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com), Orange (www.Orange.co.uk), Tiscali (www.Tiscali.co.uk), Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com) and Carphone Warehouse - owner of AOL (www.AOL.co.uk) and TalkTalk (www.TalkTalk.co.uk) have all signed up to the deal with the BPI, which represents the music industry.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI - which originally wanted offenders to be disconnected from the internet - said: “This represents a significant step forward, in that all ISPs now recognise their responsibility to help deal with illegal filesharing.”
The plan commits ISPs to work towards a “significant reduction” in illegal filesharing via a range of methods including slowing down offender’s broadband connections and developing more legal music download services.
Taylor added that reports of a levy to cover losses was incorrect.
Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “BT and Virgin Media have already begun sending out warning letters to users identified by the BPI as using their internet connections illegally.
“So far ISPs have resisted calls to disconnect customers who breach copyright laws so it will be interesting to see what other measures - such as bandwidth throttling will be introduced instead to combat heavy, regular offenders.”
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