 Ultimately the government has now put its weight behind the proposals, forcing ISPs into a difficult quandary of either accepting some degree of self regulatory compromise or the imposition of a potentially stricter legislated alternative. There can be little doubt that either “solution” would have an impact on piracy, but by how much is uncertain.
The Internet is an incredibly diverse and open environment, making it easy to manipulate and abuse. IP addresses can easily be spoofed to look like somebody else’s and the growing use of encryption makes it difficult to identify what a customer has been doing. Couple this to the widespread use of blacklists to block the IPs of known monitoring firms, proxy servers, development of invisible P2P clients, alternative (non-P2P) ways of accessing illegal content and you have a problem. For ISPs it will be important to make sure that the supplied information is accurate because you wouldn’t want to remove paying customers in error, yet the many ways in which an Internet user can mask or even fake their online activity could easily thwart all of these efforts. In essence, casual piracy is likely to take a hit but the hardcore may simply be pushed further underground where they become more difficult to fight. Meanwhile those that are caught, warned and perhaps even booted from their ISP may simply switch to a new provider, educating themselves in ways to avoid the same happening again. Still, for many, one warning should be enough and all the various parties involved will no doubt be hoping as much, lest rising costs and legal dilemmas become insurmountable. NOTE: We conducted several interviews with ISPs late last year, which included some questions about the impact of P2P. Their responses may offer additional insight below: PlusNet Interview Vispa Interview Entanet Interview Virgin Media Interview
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