The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has welcomed yesterdays leaked proposals by the government to legislate for new rules that crack down on those using the Internet to download illegal pirated movies and music (news):


The BPI claims that roughly 6 million British broadband customers regularly use peer-to-peer networks to download music unlawfully. They believe that UK ISPs have "built a business on other people’s music" and paid nothing to the creators of that music.

In response we managed to extract some interesting comments from one of the country's largest ISPs, which has chosen to remain anonymous:


Several other providers have also told us of their distain for how the various music and film industries believe they have deliberately encouraged illegal downloading, claiming that ISP's benefit from it.

In reality this couldn't be further from the truth because their economic model always works best when people aren't downloading vast amounts of data. This increases the network performance and allows the packages to become cheaper and thus more attractive to more customers. Heavy downloading only forces the introduction of either higher prices or tougher and frustrating service restrictions.

We hope to summarise some of the comments into a bigger article shortly, keep your eyes peeled.