Sample Quote: The BPI claims that ISPs have effectively “built a business on other people’s music” and paid nothing to the creators. However this statement shows a distinct lack of technical understanding and highlights the creative industries inability to comprehend the inner workings of an Internet provider. Simon Davies [IDNet] responds, “To accuse ISP's of benefiting from P2P music file sharing is naive at best but certainly rather narrow in vision. By their argument they should have similar issues with the manufacturers of CD burning equipment.”

In reality many UK ISPs are concerned by P2P’s often disruptive influence upon their networks, causing once casual users to download vast quantities of data and challenge the very survival of their tight economic models. This is especially true at the larger end of the scale, where aggressive P2P use on budget priced services has caused congestion and speed problems, resulting in customer churn and poor service quality. The budget model relies on most surfers NOT being active downloader’s and using very little data, not the other way around.