They think they can find a solution

[kinmel]

Government is about to step into the dark and often deep waters of P2P

I hope someone is appointed who understands it all better than Lord Carter and David Lammy appear to.

However, the report stressed that this would not be a government appointed regulator. Instead, it called on the industry to "come together to create a body" to deal with a number of issues, the most important, the report says, are ways of tackling peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing.

So that will be the music and film industry attack hounds then.

This would involve an obligation on internet service providers to inform, what the report calls "casual infringers who use unlawful P2P networks" that they are breaking the law. This, the report says, would result in a "rapid and substantial drop in this behaviour".

I am busy putting a new PC together and apart form Windows XP, almost  everything will be freeware/shareware and most of it will be downloaded through torrents;  there are no Illegal P2P networks, just P2P networks that also carry illegal material.  Yet more of the "hit everyone because we can't be bothered chasing the criminal" etc.

[Lance]

The bbc iplayer users would have a shock receiving one of those letters!

[Simon]

Isn't it like banning all drivers, to get the few that aren't road taxed?  Whatever they do, the file sharing community will find a way round it, like they did with ISP port throttling, by using encryption.

[Sebby]

It is, Simon, as is heavily taxing alcohol, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, it's the easy solution.

[Rik]

Or, at least, a headline catching solution.