The BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, reports that "two of the biggest ISPs" in the UK are warning that Ofcom expects broadband providers will have to issue "hundreds of thousands" of copyright infringement warning letters "a month" to customers of ISPs whom are suspected of unlawful file sharing (P2P) activity. This is a basic requirement of the new Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA).

A senior executive at one unidentified ISP told the BBC correspondent, "It's a monster thing to do, to write to hundreds of thousands of people. Some will move to another network, there might be thousands of appeals." It's not clear which ISPs were quoted, but in the recent past both BT and TalkTalk have certainly been the most vocal opposition.


The blog claims that the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), which is often seen as a representative voice of the UK recorded music business, has sent evidence (e.g. IP addresses and related details) of more than 1 Million cases of suspected music copyright infringement to ISPs, apparently with no result. We recall the BPI mentioning that it sent details of 100,000 cases to BT last year and the operator found that many were unreliable (original news).


So it seems that some ISPs have acted on the supplied evidence, issuing warning (threat) letters where appropriate, which in turn suggests that the BPI's claim of "no result" is perhaps not entirely accurate.

Similarly the unreliability of IP data to identify an offending individual is now notoriously well known. Innocent people have in the past been caught out and, where it does work, only the connection owner is targeted because a guilty individual cannot be accurately identified from just an IP address.

The BPI still claims there are 6-7 Million illegal file-sharers in the UK, a figure that Rory Cellan-Jones believes to have been accepted by ISPs. Ironically it was the BBC Radio 4 show More or Less that in 2009 revealed how such figures could easily be wrong (here).

Rory's blog also notes that, in the last week, a firm of solicitors called Gallant Macmillan has sent out thousands of letters on behalf of the Ministry of Sound (MOS) record label. One letter accused the recipient of illegally making available an album and inviting them to pay £350 or face court proceedings for infringing the rights of the label.

This is a sadly quite common tactic that often appears more about bullying people into helping dubious solicitors make money than tackling real copyright infringement.

UPDATE 4:47pm

Consumer magazine Which? has more details on the Gallant Macmillan (the latest ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons clone) letters HERE. Gallant has sent approximately 1,500 letters of claim on behalf of its client.

Unlike letters of claim sent by others dubious law firms, the letters are gentler in tone and do no threaten legal proceedings.. well not exactly. Instead, they state: 'If you do not accept the offer in this letter or explain why you dispute liability within the next 21 days, our client reserves the right to commence proceedings against you'.

UPDATE 22nd July 2010

Gallant has told PC Pro magazine that claiming you have an unsecured Wi-Fi network is no defence, albeit later admitting that this has not yet been properly tested in the courts.


Speaking personally, out of the 7 broadband routers that I have purchased in the past nine years, only one of them has come with security encryption enabled by default (that was from Sky as part of their broadband package) and even then it was initially WEP, which is easy to bypass.