Government outlines Digital Britain, industry respond with five strikes for piracy.

The Government’s final Digital Britain report was released on 16th June.

The report aimed to address the expansion of digital media channels, and the various issues facing content providers in the digital age including broadband speeds, online piracy and license fees.

Essentially, the Government is proposing a 70-80% reduction in unlawful file sharing by 2011. This will apparently be accomplished by forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to send warning letters to those who unlawfully file-share, and to further enable content owners to sue file-sharers disregarding warnings by making it easier to access the identity of an individual file-sharer from their web provider.

There had previously been a lot of talk from former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Andy Burnham regarding so-called “Technical measures” against file-sharers and these were more clearly defined in the report.

The proposal is that regulating body Ofcom will be given the power to instigate technical limitations to the service of serial copyright infringers, which could translate to blocking access to certain websites and IP addresses that facilitate file sharing alongside capping bandwidth and introducing special filters that will block the illegal downloading of copyrighted content.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) issued an immediate response on behalf of music companies with a statement from their leader Geoff Taylor: "It's clear what the Government needs to do to boost the digital music market and achieve its stated objective of significantly reducing illegal downloading by 70-80% in two years - that's to act now to require all ISPs to apply a fair system of graduated response”.

This view was reflected by cross sector trade body UK Music, who stated that they were "cautiously optimistic" that the issue of file-sharing and its impact on the content industries had been given due importance in the report, but they also felt not enough had been proposed to meet this ambitious 70-80% cut in file-sharing. Head of UK Music, Feargal Sharkey has since proposed a five strike ‘graduated response’ system comprising of the following steps:

1. Warning notice- The ISP will send a letter to the account holder who is illegally file sharing copyright material.

2. Interactive Notification & Web Redirection- The ISP will redirect the account's web browser to a website which will require the account holder to identify themselves and their responsibility for the account.

3. Should an ISP receive evidence of illegal file sharing on an account for a third occasion, it will send a notification to the account holder that their internet service will be immediately suspended for 72 hours.

4. If there's evidence of illegal file sharing on an account on a fourth occasion, the ISP will send a notification to the account holder that their internet service will be immediately suspended for one month.

5. With evidence of illegal file sharing for a fifth occasion, the ISP will suspend the account for a period of two months and then a further two month suspension should be implemented if a further infringement occurs.

The Digital Britain report also recommended providing universal access to broadband by 2012, a fund to invest in ‘next generation’ broadband and digital radio upgrades by 2015.

To download the complete report, go here.

Have your say: What do you think of the Digital Britain report? Some Internet providers already send warning letters out to serial illegal downloaders so isn’t this a futile suggestion? Also- hasn’t it been proved that individual lawsuits against those engaged in music piracy simply don’t act as a deterrent? Will this assist the creative industries in addressing the huge problem of peer to peer downloads and piracy? What do you make of Feargal’s ‘Graduated Response’ proposals?