ISPs May Be Forced To Cut Down Illegal Filesharing By 70 Percent

ISPs in UK will be encouraged to bring down illicit filesharing by a notable 70 percent within a year’s time in the wake of new powers set to be given to the communications watchdog Ofcom, says the recently published Digital Britain report.

Under the proposed plan to crack down on internet piracy, the government will give power to Ofcom to insist that ISPs gather info about the alleged offenders caught downloading copyrighted content, followed by notifying them about their illegal conduct.

Persistent offenders could even see their details to hand over to the right owners - primarily music and movie companies, along with software and games firms - which could follow a legal action against the file sharers.

Furthermore, in some of the cases, such infringers could see their access banned to certain websites, as well as throttling of their broadband speed and capacity.

Quoting the same, the report said, “These powers should be used if, and only if, the combination of measures set out above has been fully implemented but has not succeeded in significantly reducing the level of unlawful file-sharing”.

However, the report asserted that research has revealed that a majority of users stop illegal file sharing if they receive a notification, an all the aforementioned measures will only be employed if an infringer continues to download illicitly after receiving notifications.