03/01/2008

Hundreds of thousands of UK home internet users who pirate film and television programmes by downloading them may lose their web connections if British MPs have their way.

The influential Culture Select Committee, which comprises MPs from all the major UK political parties. has said that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have agreed to their terms in principle. They said, “It may be impractical for such businesses to be made legally liable for providing access to certain material, but we believe strongly that the industry should do more to discourage piracy.”

A cursory survey of the most popular illegal search engines shows that currently, new releases I Am Legend, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Hitman, Juno and Beowulf are amongst the top ten downloads.

Film companies are planning to negotiate with ISPs shortly with the express demand that web piracy offenders have their web service suspended. According to UK Film Council estimates, the industry lost about £800 million due to piracy in 2005. Given the proliferation of the internet and expanding bandwidths since then, the 2008 figure could be well over £1bn.

UK ISPs have hitherto been wary of negotiations on privacy invasion grounds. Industry body Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) have said, “ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope.”

In addition, illegal downloads, especially those using BitTorrent clients, have slowed down the web significantly. It is estimated that end users employing BitTorrent technology for downloading video account for 50% of all internet traffic.

The revolutionary BitTorrent technology breaks online video information into small pieces, finds several sources that already have the source files, downloads the different fragments into a computer’s hard drive simultaneously and then reassembles them into a complete movie or television programme that can be watched on the computer.

An ISPA spokesman said, “There are a variety of things putting pressure on internet providers, and BitTorrent is just one of them. But there is concern about the amount of bandwidth that's used. It’s one of the things ISPs have to react to whenever something new turns up.” Meanwhile the company BitTorrent has tied up with studio majors including Warners, Paramount and Fox to deliver legal movie content over the internet for a fee.

The UK MP move follows a French initiative that enjoys President Sarkozy’s support where illegal downloaders could be banned from enjoying web access.

UK ISPs have conflicting views on the proposed negotiations with leading ISP Virgin Media welcoming the move. However, British Telecom sees copyright violation as a civil, rather than criminal, offence.

British MPs have also called for camcording in cinemas to be treated as a criminal offence instead of a civil offence.