ISPs could be forced to do music industry dirty work
MOVES ARE AFOOT to force UK Internet service providers to become the latest poodle of the all-powerful music industry.
Rumours are rife with Wired reporting that six un-named Brit ISPs have already signed up to what is, at the present time, a voluntary agreement whereby repeat offenders will be booted off of the Interwibble.
The proposed move, which would ape the recently-introduced French system, means that persistent pirates will be subject to a 'three strikes and you're out' policy. Strike one gets you an email asking you to cease and desist, strike two brings a registered letter saying pretty much the same thing, and strike three means you'll have to go and find another ISP. Boohoo.
The Independent is reporting that UK law-makers are planning to add a levy to every ISP contract of £20 to £30 per year which would then be fed back to the music industry. But such a proposal would have to mean that all music would be freely downloadable.
We can't see the folks at Itunes backing that one then. µ
Update: We now believe that the six ISPs are: BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and, surprisingly given this, Carphone Warehouse.
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I'd like to know how they know what your downloading, I download tv shows, dj mixes (which I can't buy or get anywhere else) ebooks etc. which can range from 5 MB to 1GB. All I can say this is going to go the way of an idea like an ejector seat for a helicopter. Things in the UK just get worse and worse by every passing day.
In Germany you pay some kind of "tax" on CDs and DVDs which is fed back to a fund to repay the music and movie industry as you may store pirated music and movies on them. Hope our politicians in Germany don't read that one else we are next...
...And shamed: BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.
Assuming there is no way to check every song or other content we need to ask: How is it “illegal” downloading independent music, which is released for free download by tons now? Or, how it is illegal uploading your own music to shared sites?

I see this move as music industry crash with much better business formula on horizon, where WE, - listeners, and They, - Musicians will be happy than never before! Current Music industry with their service’ takes 95% of revenue should go. 
In Move to reduce open vocalist from singing, NEW Law Requies ALL Choirs to Tazzar Each Performer after each Song. As Singers as So Damn Poor, Only Tazzar Teaches Em Lesson, Eh?
TS drashek
This story is all over BBC 24 news today (along with Nazi Sex Orgy Mosley).
It was clear that this is coming. The pussies in the European Parliament are going to force the ISPs in the other European countries to do the same,, because they have to please their masters and do not understand that they cripple an infrastructure of paramount importance to the EU. Morons, traitors!
This should have about as much impact on audio piracy as slapping a BPI tax on so-called 'Music' CDRs. The industry was running scared that single-speed hifi-type CD recorders would encourage people to copy CDs for friends.

Result Music CDR's cost 50p each while everyone uses 5p data discs on computers which rip at 50 speed. The only people who still use CD recorders are musicians doing their own music -- tragically, they are the only people paying the BPI tax intended to protect musicians (and they don't even need to as they are recording stuff they own the copyright on).

BPI just don't get it that technology will always stay ahead of the law.
Internet is on the way out for us and in the end will only be used by a handful of squares and uptight conformists.
Right now the trend seems pretty much inevitable so there's no point in upgrading infrastructure a lot IMHO.
Mind you even the most 'proper' upright people are now doing at least some piracy, so that might drag the decline down a bit, but still.
I guess they'll take the internet and we'll have to use out own ad-hoc wireless networks.
How will music biz know who to target if people are using P2P with encryption and IP masking?

This will just push ordinary people into using HTTPS for browsing making their internet usage encrypted. Thus stopping music industry and ISP from prying.

There are free central HTTPSsites where you can connect to and use these to hide on the internet. It was written about recently in a national pc magazine. Phorm or Thorm or something like that. Connect as HTTPS and then browse using their computer, or something.

The music industry will teach many criminals more about being hidden on the internet, increasing the confidence of criminals and leading to more web based crime - fraud, child abuse, etc will become harder to detect with more people using HTTPS for general browsing.

P2P with HTTPS/PGP built in with download pattern masking, fake browsing behaviour patterns, fake http requests and page loadings, etc will put a stop to this.

It's not going to be hard for someone cleverer than me to work this out, if it doesn't already exist.