Three Strikes Policy Dead in UK

Yesterday the business ministry BERR (Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) announced the abandonment of the "Three strikes and you're out" policy in the UK. The announcement was followed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between ISPs and the music business.

(Read more on page 30 of the Government's Consultation paper on Legislative Options to address illicit P2P file sharing, in the section called "Sanctions").

The new regulation is expected to bring about mass letter-writing, and, in what concerns hardcore, high-volume file sharers, some particular "sanction".

"Some form of effective sanction is needed to ensure that the more serious infringers can be stopped. To that end Ofcom will invite stakeholders, including ISPs and rights holders to join a group to explore effective mechanisms to deal with repeat infringers. Members of the group will look at solutions including technical measures such as traffic management or filtering and marking of legitimate content to facilitate identification, as well as ways in which rights holders can take action against the most serious infringers."

According to BERR, for the larger ISPs who have agreed to the MoU this will mean a competitive inconvenience compared to smaller ISPs who, because they haven't closed the deal, don’t have to spend money on huge amounts of stamps and envelopes.

File sharers have British Music Rights and ISPA to thank for the Three Strikes policy’s elimination. They have who have been advocated the most intensively for disconnection to be moved off the agenda. In its turn the BPI tried very hard to impose the policy. A third party in the whole matter were the ISPs – applying such a policy would have created quite an administrative burden for them because it would have required a database of some sort in order to make sure that the ones cut off from the service don't simply reconnect with a new ISP.

We will keep you informed on the matter with further posts.