British music industry accuses BT of supporting P2P piracy

British music industry and its main watchdog, British Phonographic Industry, claims that Britains largest ISP, former government telco monopoly, British Telecom is supporting illegal music swapping over P2P networks by not doing anything to stop it.

The only ISP in the UK so far who has taken some measures to prevent P2P file swapping, has been cable company ntl, who imposed a 1GB a day download limit to its broadband customers -- the cap has proven to be massively unpopular and has caused tons of users to switch to rival ISP Telewest, or to ADSL providers (to which all BT, who still controls the landline network, provides the "last mile" connection).

BT launched its own legal music service this month and now music industry claims it's being hypocritical about the music sales. According to BPI, BT's network contributes the majority towards ever-growing P2P file-swapping within the UK. BT maintains its opinion that blocking P2P networks without causing other problems to customers is impossible -- as everybody who knows how the Net works can confirm. BT also points out that using P2P networks is not illegal, but swapping illegal files is.

More info: BBC

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 17 Mar 2003 14:20

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2 comments

Dela

To be honest when my provider (whom ill keep anonymous) were advertising their internet service to us, most of them mentioned mostly how quickly his connection could download music and one man was saying his son had a growing cd collection, downloading albums everyday as well as movies. BT know most of their customers use it for p2p so why would they block it?

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18.3.2003 04:56 #1

csayers

Has anyone seen the new BT broadband TV advert? I could not belive it when some atractive girl said 'I like to use it to down music'

Now they can claim that they are refering to legal downloads but that really is 2 fingers to the DRM crowd.

Worse than Apple's Rip Burn slogun!

19.3.2003 01:48 #2

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