The government is today expected to set a deadline of April 2009 for UK ISPs to either adopt firm measures to prevent online piracy on their networks or face legal sanctions.

It follows last weeks leak of a green paper (here) that appeared to support the introduction of a "three-strikes" system for warning and ultimately banning illegal downloader’s from their ISP.


Meanwhile ISPs continue to raise concerns about the technical difficulties, legal (online privacy) and cost implications of introducing such a system. It can be very difficult to 100% identify illegal downloading, especially when a customers data traffic has been encrypted or the connection is part of a larger shared business environment.

Sadly the government’s strategy paper is unlikely to address these concerns directly, effectively leaving it as a problem for ISPs to solve before the deadline. Like it or not ISPs will now be forced to find a solution to the problem or adopt the "three-strikes" system, we suspect this pressure is designed to encourage the latter.