UK’s six largest ISPs have signed an agreement with the country’s record labels association BPI to curb illegal file sharing in a deal brokered by the government.
For the first time, the ISPs – BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse – must work with music and other rights holders towards a “significant reduction” in illegal file sharing.
The Motion Pictures Association of America and UK’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) also signed the memorandum of understanding that commits the parties to develop consumer education programs and legal online services.
As a first step, hundreds of thousands of warning letters are to be sent by participating ISPs to customers whose accounts have been identified by BPI as being used illegally. The agreement also commits ISPs and BPI to identify effective mechanisms to deal with repeat offenders.
BPI claims six million ISP customers regularly use their broadband accounts to illegally download and distribute music online and that unpaid consumption dwarfs legal sales by a factor of 20 to one. The music industry association sees P2P as the single most important factor hurting the business.
Arguing that the UK record industry is losing hundreds of millions of pounds from illegal downloading, BPI claims the losses could be significantly cut down if ISPs help to dissuade their customers from illegal activity.