Up until now, the main two methods in dealing with the illegal sharing of
copyrighted music includes suing the users and making it more difficult to
get/share copyrighted material (share fakes, filter traffic, use DRM, etc).
Now, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in the UK aims to tackle file
sharing by demanding the Internet Service Providers Cable & Wireless and
Tiscali to suspend the accounts of 59 accounts for a list of IP addresses it
believes to be engaging in copyright infringement of music. The ISPs have so far
responded that they are investigating the issue and Tiscali mentioned that they
do not automatically suspend accounts by request unless followed by the
occasional investigation.
However Tiscali is fuming that it appears to have suffered what it calls a "media ambush" by the BPI which had sent a copy of its letter to the press before it had bothered mailing it to them.
Tiscali said that the BPI had not provided any "overwhelming evidence" that its customers were P2P pirates at all. The "overwhelming evidence" provided by the BPI amounted to a spreadsheet of 17 IP addresses that it claimed belonged to Tiscali customers, with a list of the dates that they are alleged to have nicked the music