Im glad they arent caving and shouldnt as many other ISP's have. Copyright enforcement is down to the consumer and the owner. You don't see the BBC checking what everyone is listening to and making sure they arent taping it or using a cd writer.

Every year we see masive profits from the music industry (and film), at the same time we also see increases in cd\dvd prices and the cost of concert\film tickets rise. We all know where the money goes, you only have to watch and episode of MTV cribs to see stars driving fast cars, multi million pound homes and more property then we could obtain in a few life times.

I don't download illegally, but I find the idea of my ISP allowing somebody else to view my internet activity to be a serious and frankly scary infringements of my rights. What next? will all my emails be made available for viewing by anybody who asks, will my entire web history be recorded for somebody to take a look through? Even the police are supposed to get warrants for that sort of tracking, what gives the BPI more power than the police?

In addition to that why should my ISP be forced to police the internet at all? The Royal Mail or UPS aren't responsible for the packages that travel through their systems, why should the internet be any different?

This is all in sharp contrast to Virgin's happy agreement to open their traffic to third-party scrutiny, and just as they lost customers to Sky, they're going to lose them to Carphone Warehouse.

And I never thought I'd say that ever.

Well done Charles. Whether you meant that gesture as being “right” or Moral, Evolution is about being benelovent to ALL. Without exception. All whom are moral, that is. It is absolutely immoral to demand perpetual income however one may use the due processes of hypocrisy to find in one’s favour. The worse thing about a “policeman” is that after policing the idiotic & the lunatic, he never goes home to police himself. Why? Because humans are not only hypocritical, they are addicted to hypocrisy, a 2nd order condition. And what’s so wrong about “Intellectual Property Rights”? There’s no such a thing, Mr Screw or Nut. Is the printing of money/legal-tender, no matter how skilled you are at counterfeiting, correct? Money is merely a barter expressed in a universal format but hey, can the big guy do that too? What do you think national currencies without real backing other than the, “I Promise To Pay ..” are doing? Uncle-Sammy’s Feds are printing money to justify its poodle economics/politics. That’s another view of “Digital Rights”. Still can link up all the dots? Try unsticking your head from your butt … it just might work.

"I don't download illegally, but I find the idea of my ISP allowing somebody else to view my internet activity to be a serious and frankly scary infringements of my rights"

Agreed. Is your comment some huge non-sequitur or did you not actually read what the BPI are wanting?

Interception of traffic (with or without the ISPs' collusion) was not mentioned... what they want is for the ISP to do something if the BPI get dates/IPs of file sharing. This is trivial to get for torrents, since if you're downloading a torrent your computer is doing the digital equivalent of shouting "I've got part of the file! You can get part of the file from me!" to anyone who's interested.

What the RIAA did was use that IP/date information to try to get customer details out of ISPs by sic'ing the lawyers on them, then sue the customers. This way, the ISP doesn't even have to tell the BPI the people's name.

It's no different to you emailing abuse@whoever.isp and moaning about spam coming from one of their computers.... they won't answer for weeks or months, and will ask for copious information you may or may not have kept, and won't do anything coz they don't know you from Adam and logs can be faked. This way, they work out the procedures ahead of time, and action is actually taken.

Speaking as someone who has emailed abuse departments many times (without reply), this is a Good Thing. Assuming you don't believe in breaking the law, just because it's convenient and you think you can get away with it.

It's not about copyright infringements - THINK about it:

if the BPI or anyone else is able to determine who is downloading files they hold a copyright of, then it means they also know who is hosting those files - 

it's nothing to do with the ISPs.
The ISP would only be involved if they happened to host the servers.

It's not the phone companies fault if someone uses their phonelines to commit a crime, right? 

It isn't even always in favor of artists anyway - loads of them end up losing rights to their own work, and some company gets rich off it instead or more rich than they do. It's the same with big-studio films - usually the pay-off for publicity and therefore fame, is that you no longer own your own work.
I actually know people that has happened to: they signed to a big-name label, their music is amazing and it wasn't properly pushed, and now they can't use their own music and publish it.

And the charts are faked anyway - that's been proven even on TV shows. They don't take real record sales from all shops into account - and that will be even worse now there's so many online shops too.
They couldn't even count them all properly when it was only offline stores.