'Digital Britain', the much-anticipated report commissioned to Communications minister Lord Carter of Barnes by the UK government, has given the communications regulator Ofcom new powers to monitor and eventually punish repeat internet pirates.

The creative industries have indicated they suffer considerable losses from unlawful peer-to-peer file-sharing. The BPI claim P2P file-sharing costs the UK music industry £180m in 2008 while IPSOS gives a loss in the UK for TV and films of £152m in 2007.

Declaring that “the Government believes piracy of intellectual property for profit is theft and will be pursued as such through the criminal law,” the report sets out the three-fold government’s policy objective.

Firstly, to provide a framework that encourages the growth of legal markets for downloading that are inexpensive, convenient and easily accessible for consumers.

Secondly, through encouraging suitable information and education initiatives, to ensure that consumers are fully aware of what is and is not lawful.

Thirdly, to provide for a graduated response by rights-holders and ISPs so that they can use the civil law to the full to deter the hard core of users who wilfully continue unlawful activity.

The government intends to provide initially for Ofcom to have a duty to secure a significant reduction in unlawful file sharing by imposing two specific obligations: notification of unlawful activity and, for repeat-infringers, a court-based process of identity release and civil action.

The Government is also providing for intermediate technical measures by ISPs, such as bandwidth reduction or protocol blocking, if the two main obligations have been reasonably tried but, against expectations, shown not to have worked within a reasonable but also reasonably brisk period.

Extracts from the report.

"Ofcom will be placed under a duty to take steps aimed at reducing online copyright infringement. Specifically they will be required to place obligations on ISPs to require them:
- to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof
from rights-holders) that their conduct is unlawful; and
- to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived
from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders
together with personal details on receipt of a court order.

Ofcom will also be given the power to specify, by Statutory Instrument, other
conditions to be imposed on ISPs aimed at preventing, deterring or reducing
online copyright infringement, such as:
- Blocking (Site, IP, URL);
- Protocol blocking;
- Port blocking;
- Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s Internet connection
and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access);
- Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services); and
- Content identification and filtering.

This power would be triggered if the notification process has not been successful after a year in reducing infringement by 70% of the number of people notified."

Responding to the publication of the Digital Britain report, the Director General of the British Video Association, Lavinia Carey said: “The BVA welcomes the Digital Britain Report and its recommendations for ISPs to play a greater role in the prevention of illegal downloading of content. However, we are disappointed that the report recommends that the technical measures such as bandwidth squeezing are only to be introduced after notice sending has been shown to fail and after further consultation."

Carey goes on:"The 2009 Digital Entertainment Survey, published last week by Wiggin LLP, indicates that simply sending warning letters would deter less than a third of those who illegally file-share, meaning the government is set to fall short of its target to reduce online copyright theft by 70-80% in two to three years. If the government are serious about meeting that target they must take effective action now."

Story filed 16.06.09