The Tax Cheapo

A new scheme is being developed to curb down on internet piracy. The six leading internet providers heading this are BT, VirginMedia, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse. These providers have even gone to the extent of developing legal services on file sharing.

These broadband providers will combine with a government supported program to cut down and fight illegal downloading of both films and music. There are rising concerns by some that this will infringe on the freedoms of the internet user, but nonetheless, this is not going to deter this scheme.

It is estimated that about 6.5 million Britons have in the past 12 months, legally downloaded files over the internet. The music industry claims that this in the coming 5 years, could cost them a loss of over $2 billion. This was confirmed by the UK Press Association.

Under these new laws, people who are illegally downloading files will receive warning letters, alerting them that their activities had been detected, and that they were now being monitored. A London Times newspaper indicated that if they persisted and ignored the warnings, they could become subject to not only monitoring and surveillance, but their internet speeds will be restricted. This will then mean that they will not be able to swap any large files.

Liberty Campaigners are very concerned that this is an infringement on the rights of innocent users of the internet. For instance, parents who do not even know that their children are illegally downloading files will be targeted by this scheme. Nonetheless the level of illegal downloading according to a survey by the University of Hertfordshire, Britain, pointed out that most iPods or MP3 digital music players contain an average of 800 songs that were illegally downloaded or copied.