UK to copy French stance on Illegal downloading

Times Online reports that the UK government is considering new laws to tackle the growing piracy problem, according to a leaked Green Paper.

Internet Service Providers could be legally obliged to take actions against users who are either downloading or uploading pirated material like movies, software or music files.

The Dailymail writes that those suspected of theft will be sent a warning email to stop followed by a suspension and a third infringement will end up with a contract termination.

This three-strike scenario is set to debut in France soon after the French president Nicolas Sarkozi gave his blessings to the scheme.

The rise in illegal downloads has been fuelled by the popularity of peer to peer technology like Bit torrent which makes it frighteningly easy for even Internet novices to download illegal content within seconds.

The fact that broadband prices have fallen sharply in the past years as well has prompted many to try downloading content, legal or not.

The big four Internet Service Providers have already voluntarily started to talk to Hollywood film studios on how they should tackle the issue of piracy.

This also raises the question of how the ISPs will monitor what content a user is downloading with an estimated six million internet users doing the bad thing. Tags: Digital Media, Digital Rights Management, Personal Privacy, Software Piracy, The Web