Posted: 07th Jun, 2009 By: MarkJ
Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse and UK broadband ISP TalkTalk (at least until next summer -
news), has warned the government that plans (
here) aimed at forcing Internet Service Providers to halt illegal file sharing (P2P) are "
naive" because pirates will always find ways around such measures.
Dunstone, while speaking to
The Guardian newspaper last week, said: "
If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid."
"
If people want to share content they will find another way to do it," he added. "
It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer [P2P] and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive."
Dunstone doesn't touch on the fallibility of using Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to identify illegal file sharers but his broad message about the overall problem is similar. Still, he neglects the fact that most surfers probably lack the technical competence to know how to disguise their traffic, albeit nothing a quick Google search or two couldn't easily solve.
Elsewhere Dunstone confirmed that TalkTalk will be taking part in North London trials of BT's next generation Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) up to 40Mbps broadband technology, which begins on 1st July and lasts for a period of up to 6 months. He also anticipates that pricing for the top tier 40Mbps product will be less than the £40 per month tag given to early ADSL services.