U.K. Govt. Looks to Reduce Illicit File-Sharing by 70-80%

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 16, 2009 - 12:08pm.

London - The U.K. government aims to reduce by 70-80% the incidence of unlawful file-sharing, and will instruct its Ofcom communications regulator to work with the industry on commercial solutions, which "remain by far the preferred approach," according to the Digital Britain report released on Tuesday.

According to a summary of the report's findings posted by Music Ally, ISPs will be asked to forward warnings from copyright holders to customers suspected to be engaging in unauthorized file-sharing, as well as to turn over data on repeat infringers under request from a court order.

If the warnings fail to reduce file-sharing by 70% after a year, additional technical measures would be warranted.

These could include "Blocking (Site, IP, URL); Protocol blocking; Port blocking; Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber's Internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access); Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber's access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services); Content identification and filtering -- or a combination of these measures," according to the report.

The recording industry had been pressing for a "three-strikes" proposition, wherein repeat file-swappers would see their Internet connections suspended.

A similar law recently passed in France -- which would have disconnected repeat file-swappers without the need of a court order -- saw that aspect of its provisions stripped out by France's highest court.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/k9cvq (Music Ally)

http://snipurl.com/k9eil (Billboard)

http://snipurl.com/k9ch0 (PDF: Digital Britain report)

Published in DMW Daily, June 16, 2009

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Comments

If the idea is that reducing

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on June 18, 2009 - 7:17am.

If the idea is that reducing available bandwidth will decrease the illegal downloads, this sounds a lot like a commercial solution that already exists (netequalizer). The difference is that it doesn't take forever to actually accomplish the goal.