What's next, monitor gas users to check if the gas is being used to make drugs, monitor water users in case they are using the water to make illicit alcohol, monitor electric users, in case they are using the electricity to power machine tools to make weapons .... unbelievable.

The music industry has grasped the technology with both hands and used it to reduce their costs and raise their exorbitant profit margins...when the man in the street attempts to do the same it's not acceptable.... mmmm !

MG, portsmouth,

As somebody previously suggested, this is really just expanding the role of Big Brother, who already interferes excessively with the privacy of your Honest Brit.

The strength of the Internet is significantly due to the fact that ISPs are "content neutral".... and in any case the techies will always be 3 steps ahead of the lawyers.

Antonio, Marbella,

I am always amazed how the government employs experts for a lot of money who seem to offer absolutely useless advice.
First we had the Y2K bug fiasco. The experts told them that this would cause mass disaster. Planes falling from the sky, power stations failing and computer system crashing world wide that would result in the collapse of the global economy. So they spent billions warning us when the reality was that this was a minor problem. And when nothing did happen the government buried the whole 2YK bug rather than admit they wasted so much money on a problem that never really existed.

Now here comes their next technological disaster after being advised by so called experts.

The truth is that you can not expect Internet service providers to take all the responsibility for what their users do with their Internet connections.
If this is the case then I would be able to sue the DVLA or transport department if I get hit by someone because of bad driving or it turns out they are uninsured because they are using their roads. Or maybe we could all start suing the government for the rise in crime because they are allowing it to happen in “their” country.

The record industry already has an unhealthy habit of accusing the wrong people and being counter sued. Now they expect the Internet business to take their punishment for them. The record industry says jump, the Internet provider cuts off the person accused, who then sues the Internet provider, leaving the record industry to walk away from the carnage unscathed.

What seems to have been overlooked here is that the record industry is trying to get away with murder again, and yet again they are asking the government to help them.
The government did not seem that interested on behalf of the consumer when it was pointed out they were inflating the price of CDs. But now the record industry is crying it is losing money, and can not be bothered to change its business plan, the government has jumped feet first into the frying pan again. Why is the government so quick to jump to the crying of the record industry? Have they not learnt anything from their previous disastrous journeys into the world of computers? Or maybe there are MPs who are not putting all their interests in the register of member’s interests? Maybe the MPs are thinking of making a record?

But it does not matter what the government say or do. It does not matter what the record industry say or who they claim is sharing music. There are two words that make them both look complete novices and idiots in this whole incident. “PROXY SERVER”

Any body can use a proxy server. It takes about 2 minutes to turn it on or off and can cost nothing. But the important thing is that it makes the user invisible on the Internet.
If anybody tries tracing a download or a connection it gives them another computer in another country. And so yet again the record industry tries to sue an innocent person!

Now you can see why the Internet providers want the record industry to foot the legal bill for people they tell them to disconnect.

So what is the outcome for all of this? The only one I see is a record industry and the UK government with red faces and an ever growing legal bill.

reboot, London, uk

So the Stasi system has immigrated from East Germany.
Welcome to the new wonderful world of nu Labour's meaning-of democracy. I would like to protest with a banner past the House's of Parliament. I just remembered one can't now; I will be arrested by the Stasi police.

A Walton, Leicester, England

It'll never work....

JP, Lancaster, UK

Without the rapid growth in demand for p2p networks, development would have been sluggish and we would not have the benefit of many popular websites as there would be no reason for the developers to expand these systems.

Google is hosted on an in house p2p network, surely this has only come as a result of the massive development of the systems for whatever use.

On a different thread perhaps the record company executives should stop being so greedy. Artists rarely receive any money from record sales even when they sell 1 million+ cd's.

They often rely on their live performances to bring in the cash for themselves, and undoubtedly this interest is generated by people listening to their music, from whatever source it is irrelevant, but a live performance cannot be pirated, and if people bare this in mind then why should there be an issue - just to line the pockets of the industry executives?

Jack, Lancaster,

New Labour threatening to take people 'off grid', just like in the matrix. Why is this government so Orwellian? Thanks for nothing New Labour.

RB, Abderdeen,

I wish I could understand why new labour regards downloading from the internet as "theft", whilst at the same time supports borrowing from a library.

jasper, chelmsford,

If a laptop can be produced for £99 why is is £15 for a DVD when it is first released other than they can get away with theovercharging? When it is no longer premium marketing material the same DVD can be sold profitably for as little as £3 so we know the true cost of manufacture.
Can someone organise a lobby to get a refund for all the copyright fee duplication every time we change media harware? I am sure this multiple charging by the media companies grossly exceeds the cost of piracy to them.

D Cage, Highworth, Wilts

I'm afraid the music and movie industries have not awoken to the realities of the 21st century. It is almost as if they are 19th century blacksmiths trying to use the law to prevent the advent of the motor car. They should recognise that their business model of selling an ephemeral product for a premium price is diminishing and will soon vanish for ever in its present format. They shouldn't complain. They got almost a whole century of stupendous profits and wealth from the media. Things have moved on. They are intelligent people and probably recognise this too. Their problem is the same one as the blacksmiths, weavers, spinners and coopers had. What do they do now? They will continue to fight a rearguard action, to manage and slow the decline as long as possible, but they can't put this genie back into the bottle.

Vince Meegan, Brighton & Hove,

It always has irritated Government that the internet is something over which they have no control and this might be viewed as an exercise in trying to demonstrating otherwise.

Good luck to them. I can think of ten good reasons why it won't work technically and another five where it won't work legally.

Richard Crow, Warsaw, Poland

Copyright law as it stands is perceived as anti-progressive . It stifles innovation because innovators are bound to create things that are significantly different from any existing material.

It is also perceived as unjust as the industries, fighting for their interests, insist pirating starves their sector of funding and therefore creativity. Hollywood's attitude to the the screenwriters strike exposed that argument as the hypocrisy it is; the creators are scraping out a living while the 'talent' is earning obscene amounts (and consequently corrupting our society as it scrambles around to figure out ways of coaxing their money from them).

Eamonn, Cardiff,

The govenment once again taking steps to protect the corporate sector. It is NOT illegal to copy a song it is a civil matter, why the hell is big brother getting involved?

The music and film industry need to realise that their old marketing model was doomed from the first day of internet and broadband. They should have invested some of the billions plundered from overpriced product to re-think their marketing and get with the game plan instead of getting goverments to force unworkable systems to enable them to carry on with obscene profits and an outdated marketing system.

Civil matters have nothing to do with our elected government. When will the Brits wake up to the fact that their representatives are working against them in behalf of huge business.

jono, canaries, spain

I will be very interested to see how this is implimented. How will the ISP's know the difference between the downloading of illegal material and open source software (which is freely distributed) especially given the fact that as soon as this law is enacted the datastream will be encrypted.

It seems that ministers who do not know the 1st thing about technology have put forward this solution.

Colin Mclaren, Manchester, UK

I think there should be some other form of lateral policy network approach to get round this - it is too late and to complicated to even consider chasing individual freeware downloaders - thats an absurd notion> It would bottleneck the entire CJS for years - how about (for instance) ISP's paying FOR the download sites via a statutory fee to the music moguls; which they then offer as an optional add-on to subscribers - that way the downloads can continue and the music industry doesnt lose out; they are paid handsomely by the ISP's who are paid in kind by their clients - the horse has bolted but someone has to pay for leaving the gate open>it would be a far simpler task to block someone on the net (usng an ISP network gateway) attempting to download without an ISP 'download fee cookie' - the beauty of it is such a gateway would solve the issue - ensure the music/video had been paid for in some way and also provide client-end empowerment - a choice of a 'media download' package option :)

William, Hastings,

The ISPs would lose a lot of revenue...

Jennifer Hynes, Plymouth, England

The peer to peer mechanism that has been developed by the 'pirates' will evolve into a new mechanism as soon as the net-police start work. Perhaps we should look at this another way?
If the downloaders were not able to download the content, would they purchase it? Probably not in 80% of the content cases. Would that help the industry, no!
Would the downloaders be prepared to pay a small fee for downloading what we are told is sub-standard quality content? Possibly?
If movies were available for download at the substandard quality, mono audio level, would the millions of downloaders be prepared to pay, say 50p for a movie that they would not, under any circumstances, go out and purchase otherwise? Or perhaps £1.50 for the full DVD quality content? Would the content owners be making a profit at this price? Possibly.

Then again, perhaps these downloaders are trying to save the planet by reducing the use of plastics in making DVDs and shipping them all around the world?

cliff walker, Reading, Hampshire

Oh no the people who pay for their ISP are actually USING their bandwidth?!?! Surely they should pay a monthly subscription and then NOT use the service they pay for, I hate to think of all those servers being put under a bit of strain,

This proposed plan is utter nonsense anyway, torrents can be encrypted for those who actually use them anyway, while the people who know what they're doing will continue to download from usenet via SSL connections, at top speed possible with no chance of their ISP's being able to tell what they're downloading, the people who think up these proposals are so ignorant of the technology actually in use it's absolutely bewildering that they feel they can even comment on the situation.

Rob, Peterborough,

I've followed this story and it is a joke. There is no way it is workable. The government is going to try and stop a force that comprises of millions from downloading music/videos/apps etc.

As long as there are millions of talented programers working on it, there will always be a way around the rules.

Jamie, Truro,

This seems a bit bizarre to me:

If you put a sweetie on a table, a kid will surely eat it.

It appears to me that what is occurring here is that the government are focusing on "effect" rather than "cause". Why are they not simply closing down the website that enables the download of the video/music.

It appears to me to be somewhat sinister if you pursue the person who is downloading video/music freely available - ie after the horse has bolted so to speak.

It strikes me that this is "illogical", "not thought out very well" and if anyone legally academic is involved deficient in intellect.

However, perhaps there is some interesting "jurisprudence" in their somewhere - science and theory of human law.

Lesley McDade , Edinburgh, Lothian, Scotland