U.K. Proposes to Shut Off Internet for Illegal Downloaders

U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported Tuesday that this British government is considering harsher laws to crack down on illegal filesharers. Penalties reportedly on the table could require ISP's to ban access to certain download sites, slow broadband connections and even cut off internet access to repeat offenders.

Although similar measures were thrown out in June of this year, as detailed in the Digital Britain report to the U.K.'s Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport, pressure from BPI (the trade body for the British recording industry) to crack down on piracy has reopened the debate. The ISPs will likely balk at having to shoulder the trouble and expense of policing downloaders, and equal rights groups such as Britain's Open Rights Group have expressed their opposition to individuals' being denied internet access. But for now, the new penalties remain a possibility.

Other countries have been pushing forward their own harsh punishments for downloaders. The Guardian reports that President Nicolas Sarkozy has been advocating similar measures in France, and last Friday, the Swedish government ordered download site The Pirate Bay to be taken offline.

So how likely are these measures in the U.S.? Actually, they seem possible. In December 2008, Mitch Bainwol, the CEO of RIAA (the U.S. trade group representing 85% of all "legitimate sound recordings" nationwide) sent out a letter to the staff of the House and Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees notifying them that the RIAA would cease its five-year-long policy of litigation against end-users (that is, individuals who file-share).

Instead, the RIAA would implement what it calls a system of "graduated response programs," meaning that it will use the ISPs to send warning letters to internet customers who download illegally. In the December letter, it claims that in the final few months of 2008, ISPs sent out more warning letters than the RIAA had filed lawsuits in the course of the previous five years.

However, the U.S. government continues to be involved with the effort. The RIAA is working with ISPs through New York Attorney General Mario Cuomo to craft the details of these so-called graduated responses. And the RIAA is remaining disconcertingly mum on the details of these agreements.

Tellingly, the RIAA openly subscribes to the theory that harsher penalties, such as litigation, do work. Although the recording industry continues to have flagging sales, the RIAA proudly reports an NPD Group finding that in 2008, for the first time, the number of legal downloads surpassed the amount of P2P file-sharing in the U.S.

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