Despite last week championing BT's decision to allow music fans unlimited access to tracks stored on its legit music download service, dotmusic, in return for a monthly subscription, the BPI has this week criticised BT for failing to tackle illegal downloading by their legions of internet customers. Speaking to the BBC, a BPI spokesman said the telecoms giant had been reluctant to discuss the issue of online piracy despite repeated attempts by its anti-piracy division to work together on the issue.
Jollyon Benn of the BPI's anti-piracy unit: "BT is the biggest service provider in terms of peer-to-peer traffic but getting them to discuss the issues is like pulling teeth. It will be a red letter day when they talk to us. BT is trying to create business links with the music industry at the same time as being completely intransigent to the issues of piracy."
The BPI points out that other major ISPs such as NTL have met with them to discuss the use of their internet services for the illegal file share of music, and that they have found some ways to deal with the problem – mainly the unpopular decision to cap the amount of bandwidth subscribers can use at any one time, making downloading large music files a slower affair.
"In terms of capping downloads we have no current plans to do that," Duncan Ingram, BT Openworld's MD admitted, but he denied his company was aiding the music pirates. "We aren't supporting an illegal market. Peer-to-peer is a technology and it isn't inherently illegal. Where do you draw the line about what is legal and what isn't? That is a range of responsibility that we are not equipped to deal with."
He said he had spoken to the BPI about the issue, and that he would continue to do so. But he added that without good quality legal alternatives, people were bound to be attracted to the services offered by file-sharing networks. "That is why we have launched Dotmusic, which offers a reasonably priced legitimate alternative for people."