I,m beginning to wonder how this company will hope to retain any of it customers if this report is true.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080812-report-uk-isp-set-to-pay-labels-for-songs-shared-via-p2p.htmlAt least one ISP in the UK, Virgin Media, has agreed to send warning letters to those caught sharing music on its system. Now, rumor has it that Virgin will take a big step beyond a nastygram, and start paying content providers for songs that pass through its system.
PaidContent:UK is reporting the story, and indicates that it has been gathering the details for some time. According to its story, Virgin Media has reached an agreement with playlouder, which already runs a subscription-based music service. Virgin will see playlouder install deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment on its networks; the hardware will detect copyrighted material that traverses the network, and Virgin will compensate the rights holders accordingly.
I see a criminal investigation going down if this report is true as its wholly illegal to monitor communications under the interception of communications act and there is no hiding place in the regulation of investigatory powers act (RIPA), nor the data protection act either to allow for third party interception of net traffic or user data, for these reasons I believe this is another scare story to be used in the US to pretend to congress that this is the route to follow and ISP companies will just roll over, in short I believe this is a lot of hot air.
Lets hope I,m correct or we will be helping many users look for a more respectable ISP company in the near future