“Hundreds of thousands” could face letters about file sharing

Rory Cellan-Jones has reported that two of the biggest internet providers in the country have warned net regulator Ofcom that they expect to issue “hundreds of thousands” of letters warning users about their copyright infringements online every single month. These letters will be sent out to those who are suspected of engaging in illegal file sharing online after becoming a fundamental requirement of the Digital Economy Act.

The ISPs themselves have remained anonymous, but it’s pretty likely from previous opposition to the act that one of the providers is TalkTalk, and the other may be BT. Anonymous spokespersons from various ISP told the BBC of the problems they are facing in sending out such a huge amount of letters:

“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.”

“Will they have to secure their wireless networks, or sit over their children’s shoulders making sure they’re not being naughty, or perhaps stop using perfectly legal peer-to-peer services like Spotify? It’s a dog’s breakfast.”

Indeed these letter figures don’t seem all that exaggerated, especially when you consider that the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) is suggest that there are between 6 and 7 million people in the UK who regularly engage in illegal filesharing. However, the BBC have suggested these figures could easily be wrong.

Last year the BPI sent BT over 20,000 cases of file sharing, but only a small percentage of those were actually potentially valid cases. Many proved to be duplicated, unmatched with a proper address or non BT addresses, so it’s not hard to imagine the BPI aren’t being that rigid with their data collection in this case.

Either way sending out this many letters is going to be a massive undertaking for any provider, and for many this won’t be the end of correspondence either, as others warning letters will have to be sent before any further action can take place. The government and record industry are hoping that a large volume of letters will be enough to stop people from filesharing.

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