Virgin likely to lose 800 customers by colluding with BPI over file-sharing

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Thousands of UK broadband users who share music tracks illegally may receive letters warning them of the consequences. Music trade body the BPI claims to have already identified and contacted about 800 Virgin Media customers who have been sharing copyrighted material (this despite it being impossible to tell what files are being shared). Virgin has agreed to send the letters to those customers, informing them that what they are doing is illegal.

The BPI wants Internet providers to agree to cut off people who repeatedly ignore the warnings, and this is where it could get very interesting: the BPI is warning that it may sue other ISPs who refuse to co-operate with its demands, despite there being no legal requirement on ISPs to do as they are being ordered to by the music industry. And some ISPs have already made it clear they will not comply.

Isn’t it likely that when other ISPs see Virgin lose those 800 surprised, upset, frightened and angry customers almost immediately to other providers, they will tell the BPI to bring it on? It’s worth going to court to get the positive PR from being seen as defending your customers’ civil liberties and fighting the push for ISPs to be turned into the bitches of the BPI.

What would you do if you got a letter of that nature? Surely if you’ve been forking out on average £20 a month, sometimes more, for your Internet connection, whether you’ve been file-sharing or not, you’d walk away from your contract when a letter like that arrived? Okay, the first thing you’d do, if you were file-sharing, would be to stop—but that would probably only be for your remaining time with that ISP. If you felt wrongly fingered for crimes you weren’t committing, you would almost certainly make some angry calls to the company, fire off a few emails, and even get a solicitor to shoot back a letter of your own warning of the dangers in accusing people of crimes unproven.

Most ISPs are probably well aware of these possibilities, from customers walking away through to taking them to court, in all ways damaging companies’ reputations, but for some reason Virgin is willing to lose the customers it has and put others off from signing up for its Internet services, all to make the BPI happy.

The news that Virgin is willing to do the BPI’s dirty work comes in the same week as the ISP was found by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to have been less than truthful in stating what Internet speeds are achievable through its service.

The BPI wants the government to introduce legislation to force ISPs to police their customers’ Internet activities, which, if the government complies, would not be something people would take lying down, any more than they are accepting of BT flouting current data laws by pressing ahead with further illegal trials of ad-targeting software made by Phorm, which will take note of every website you visit. It’s not even clear, despite politicians making tough noises pleasing to the entertainment industries, that new laws could be introduced to stop file-sharing without falling foul of EU privacy legislation which our country is bound to comply with.

On what basis the BPI would take ISPs to court right now is unclear. But going to war against your customers is never a good idea. Only Virgin Media seems to think that it is.

categories: all wired up, choons