Record label trade body the BPI have announced a "ground breaking" agreement. Which is good news. Well, possibly not for the ground. The agreement is between the record industry and those pesky internet service providers, and has been brokered by the government who, it turns out, aren't totally incompetent at everything.
But let's do the back-story first. As much previously reported, the record companies have long claimed the internet service providers should take on a more proactive role in combating the illegal distribtion of content on the net by their customers. The ISPs have in the main resisted taking on such a role, but some in the internet provision industry have started to come round to the idea that they will, in the end, have to do more than in the past, partly because the government have indicated they will force them to do so through new laws if they don't do it voluntarily.
As also previously reported, Virgin Media agreed to get a little more proactive recently by agreeing to send out warning letters to any of its customers who the BPI believed were accessing illegal sources of music. Today's announcement sees five other ISPs - BT, Tiscali, Orange, Sky and, most interestingly (given they've been most resistant so far) Carphone Warehouse - basically sign up to similar programme of letter sending. In addition to that they will sign a Memorandum Of Understanding under which they will pledge to work with the music and film industries in a bid to gain a "significant reduction" in illegal filesharing.
The agreement has been facilitated by the government's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and interestingly media regulator OfCom is likely to get involved in coordinating any combined efforts involving all the internet service providers. That news follows recent comments made by OfCom chief Ed Richards in which he said he saw a role for his organisastion in policing copyright on the net.
Announcing the expansion of the ISP letter sending programme, and the wider 'memorandum of understanding', BPI chief Geoff Taylor told CMU: "This MOU represents a significant step forward, in that all ISPs now recognise their responsibility to help deal with illegal filesharing. Government has played an important role in bringing all parties together to arrive at this point, but the work really begins now. We look forward to creating the procedures necessary to effectively tackle repeated unlawful filesharing with the other signatories and Ofcom".
He continued: "BPI has always believed that a partnership approach is the best way forward, as we showed with our education campaign with Virgin Media, launched in May. This has demonstrated that ISPs and the music business can work together positively to raise awareness about illegal filesharing. And, working with government, we have been able to build on that progress and encourage other major ISPs to start taking a responsible approach. In addition, the music business is constantly innovating to offer new, safe and legal ways to enjoy music online, and to create a future for digital music where creativity and copyright are respected. This MOU will help to create an environment in which such new digital services models can flourish".
It's not clear what all this means for the ISPs who are not signatories of the memorandum. And of course there remains doubt that the letter sending in itself will seriously discourage file sharers. It is true there is still some ignorance of the illegality of file sharing and letters like these may persuade the ignorant to switch to legitimate digital music services. But unless the BPI is willing to take another load of file sharers to court, or the ISPs can be persuaded to implement the BPI's full plan - whereby those who ignore the warning letters would have their net connections cut off - many filesharers who receive the letter may well ignore it and carry on regardless.
And even if lawsuits or disconnections occur, serious file sharers will find ways to access illegal music without detection. The long and the short of it is that P2P file sharing will never be eradicated, but the record companies know that. The aim of initiatives like this is to persuade casual file sharers to go legit, and to stop those new to online music to go down the file-sharing route for the first time. The question is how many people do the record companies want to see put off file sharing in order to be satisfied that there has been a "significant reduction" in online piracy. At that point is not yet clear.