People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.

Speaking at a government-sponsored forum to debate copyright issues he said the UK would introduce a similar policy to France.

It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing disconnection from the network.

The issue has divided the telecoms and media industries.

Mr Mandelson said that cutting internet connections would be a "last resort".

"I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have the opportunity to appeal," he told the audience at the C&binet Forum, a talking shop set up by government to debate the issues facing the creative industries.

The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said.

The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said.

It would mean that, for example, someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully.

Mr Mandelson praised the UK's creative industries, which are worth around £16bn and employs 2 million people.

But it has been eroded in recent years, he said, by new ways of accessing content.

"I was shocked to learn that only one in 20 music tracks in the UK is downloaded legally. We cannot sit back and do nothing," said Mr Mandelson.

The fact that young people now expect to download content for free was "morally as well as economically unsustainable," he added.

Mere conduits

But he emphasised that "legislation and enforcement can only ever be part of the solution".

The long-term answer was for the industry to offer new and cheaper ways to download content, he said.

In France the government has just approved a so-called three strikes policy.

Under its system, those identified as illegally downloading content would initially be sent warning letters and, if they failed to comply, could be removed from the network for up to a year.

UK internet service providers have argued that it is not their job to police the network, claiming that there are "mere conduits" of content.

They also say that they should not have to bear the brunt of the costs.

In his speech, Mr Mandelson said that the costs of enforcing the policy would be "shared between ISPs and content providers".

Dark net

The Open Rights Group, a digital rights lobby organisation, has long been opposed to a disconnection policy.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, is disappointed that the UK government is determined to introduce such legislation.

"Even MI5 disagree with Mr Mandelson - they are convinced we will see a rise of a 'Dark Net' of infringers. Nobody at C&binet from an online music service, as opposed to an old media company, thought that P2P was a threat to their businesses

"Yet Mandelson seems determined to push forward with his plans for 'three strikes' - threatening to punish people extremely harshly, threatening their education, businesses and livelihoods for a relatively minor financial misdemeanour," he said.

At the same forum, Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi, a French content and internet service provider, said he agreed with a tough stance.

"At Vivendi, we are in the content business, we are in the telecom business and there is no internal debate," he told delegates.

"The priority is not to grow traffic on the ISPs. The priority is that creators, people who develop content, should find a way [to be rewarded]."

Source : news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8328820.stm

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