Our take...
For the most part the EU debate on anti-piracy legislation revolved around the issues of individual freedoms and rights; however, the decision is of consequence to the telecommunications industry. Previous attempts by anti-piracy lobbies to transfer the content policing burden to ISPs have been met with resistance by the latter. As none of the previously proposed piracy responses prevented the disconnected users from switching to another ISP, implementation of 'tree strikes' policy in mature and fiercely competitive Western European broadband access markets would have lead to a zero-sum game between the service providers with the potential for more lenient ISPs to augment their subscriber base at the expense of others.

Moreover, determining instances of illegal file-sharing is a non-trivial task – with no returns on the investment in such activities, ISPs are naturally not keen on taking up the burden. In the UK it was the fear of regulatory intervention and government enforced anti-piracy legislation has prompted the industry to engage voluntarily. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) association has signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' with UK's six largest ISPs (BT Retail, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse). While the agreement stipulated sending out of warning letters 'educating' users about the illegality of file-sharing and explaining how to avoid it, the final response to continued file-sharing after a user received a warning was not agreed on.

Screen Digest believes that while warning letters might have short-term effect against the 'casual' file-sharers, the more technically savvy 'pirates' would easily move towards using encryption which would make the trafficked content unidentifiable.