A report in the Guardian earlier this week said that broadband providers, including BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB and Talk Talk have been asked to create a database that will monitor customers who download pirated material, including books, music, television shows and films.
Persistent offenders could find themselves ‘cut off’ if they receive more than three warning letters within a year and could even face a civil claim under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
The new measures will be discussed in Downing Street next week but negotiations between record label bosses, their trade association, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the British Video Association have reportedly been underway for months.
A BPI spokesman said that he expects a range of issues to be discussed at the breakfast meeting, including encouraging the growth of legal digital music services in the UK and overseas exports.
He added that the association will discuss the need for swifter action to reduce online copyright theft, improve consumer awareness of the legality of copyright and ways of making the UK the leading digital economy in Europe.
The Digital Economy Act, which became law in 2010 in a bid to combat digital piracy in the UK, has yet to be implemented, but is given teeth under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and is expected to come into its own right legally in 2014, or maybe even as late as 2015 after the next general election.
However, industry figures are said to be becoming impatient with the delay, which is why they are putting pressure on broadband providers, who can keep tabs on their customers and help to combat the digital piracy that goes on.
The latest figures from Ofcom suggest that a whopping 280 million music tracks were digitally pirated in the three months between November last year and this January, along with 52 million TV shows, 29 million films, 18 million ebooks and 7 million computer games files.