Piracy is unstoppable, says ISP CEO

[p2p rules]

According to Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk CEO Charles Dunstone, piracy is unstoppable and the media industry's call to have ISPs as watchdogs is "naive" at best.

Instead, Dunstone believes a more reasonable solution is to educate users about the "benefits of respecting copyright" while also launching services that will allow consumers to get music and movies cheaper and easily.

Speaking at TalkTalk's quarterly conference call, Dunstone added:

"If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid."

The media industry continues to push for controversial laws such as the 'three strikes' laws that would force ISPs to disconnect multiple time offenders.

"If people want to share content they will find another way to do it," he added. "It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive."

afterdawn