Pressure put on ISPs by UK film and TV stars to stop piracy online

A call for UK broadband ISPs to act against piracy online, which includes peer to peer (P2P) and illegal file-sharing, in a letter entitled an ‘Open Letter To The Times’ written by some of the best known TV and film producers in the country.

They also warned that any ISP that failed to combat this issue should be forced to do so.

A quote from the letter stated “In 2007, an estimated 98 million illegal downloads and streams of films took place in the UK, while it is believed that more than six million people illegally file-share regularly. In relation to illegal downloads of TV programmes, the UK is the world leader, with up to 25 per cent of all online TV piracy taking place in the UK. Popular shows are downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times per episode.

We are asking the Government to show its support by ensuring that internet service providers play their part in tackling this huge problem. Internet service providers have the ability to change the behaviour of those customers who illegally distribute content online. They have the power to make significant change and to prevent their infrastructure from being used on a wholesale scale for illegal activity. If they are not prepared to act responsibly, they should be compelled to do so.”

Although the sentiments that were expressed in the letter are something many people agree with, the idea that ISPs would have the capability to resolve the piracy issue on their own is considered my many to be lack of understanding of the workings of the Internet and its related technology. It would be an almost impossible task, and due to privacy law an illegal one, to ask any ISP to take every data packet that passed through its network and inspect, identify and filter it.

Data travelling around the internet is meaningless to an ISP other than to identify what is being used, although not how it is used. External and often flawed IP tracking methods that can inform an ISP of which user and traffic it suspects of illegal activities are the standard way of picking up on this kind of activity. This, however, can easily be abused by randomising, hijacking and redirecting IP addresses. This systematic weakness has been highlighted recently due to the large increase in cases that have seen people being accused of illegal activity wrongly.