UK takes extreme measures for Music Piracy..
Yes, the next time you are downloading your favorite 'Benny Bennassi - Satisfaction' vedio or 'Shaggy - Mr Lomba Lomba Bombastik!' track from P2P than think about it again.. your parents might get the 'letter'..
| quote: |
Parents targeted over children's music piracy !!
Teenagers who use the internet to download music illegally will trigger warning letters to their parents under a Government-brokered deal.
Britain's six largest internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to send warning letters to hundreds of thousands of customers whose accounts are being used to download or share pirated songs.
Many will be received by the unsuspecting parents of a generation of children who have come to see music as a free commodity, thanks to illegal filesharing services.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is expected to claim the deal is a victory its war on filesharing, which has dented CD sales and severely damaged the music industry.
The six internet companies are BT, BSkyB, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali and Carphone Warehouse, which sells broadband access under the AOL and Talk Talk brands.
They have signed a memorandum of understanding which commits them to sending "informative letters" to customers whose accounts have been identified by the BPI as being used for filesharing.
It is estimated that there are more than six million illegal filesharers in the UK and the majority are aged under 24.
Experts said the deal between the BPI and the web companies could have a significant impact even though the service providers will only send letters to a proportion of accounts identified as being used for filesharing.
"The parents of teenagers are the music industry's best target by a long shot," said Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research. "Either they won't know what has been happening and be shocked, or will have been turning a blind eye and suddenly decide they have to do something."
The agreement will stop short of the BPI's call for ISPs to cut off repeat offenders. However, the media regulator Ofcom is expected to be asked by the Government to broker a deal on how repeat offenders should be dealt with.
The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform is also set to publish a consultation on proposed new legislation which would require ISPs to crack down on filesharing.
ISPs are seeking to show they are willing to take action against file sharers and work with the music industry in a bid to avoid legislation.
BSkyB this week unveiled plans for a new legal music download service targeted at families.
Virgin Media, the UK's largest provider of home broadband, has already agreed to send out thousands of letters during a 10-week trial.
A spokesman for the BPI, who refused to comment on any deal, said: "We have always maintained that a partnership is the right way to tackle illegal filesharing, as we showed with our education campaign with Virgin Media. Clearly there is still much work to be done, but we are getting ever closer to a future for digital music where creativity and copyright are respected.
"We have looked to ISPs to acknowledge their responsibility to help deal with illegal filesharing, engage in communicating the issue to their customers, and put in place procedures necessary to effectively tackle repeated unlawful filesharing. Achieving this would represent a significant step forward and demonstrate clearly the collective will that exists to tackle this serious issue."
|
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...sic-piracy.html
Last edited by Kinezi on Jul-25-2008 at 08:19
|
