Andre Yoskowitz
31 Mar 2008 15:41
After last month's "three strikes and you're off the Internet" announcement in the UK was made official, it seems the large ISP Virgin Media will be the first to implement the plan.
Although record labels have been pushing for a plan like this for years, it is not even known yet whether the actual measures are legal. The government is expected to have a meeting on that very subject sometime next month. Despite this fact, BPI and Virgin say they will enact a pilot program using the infamous "three strikes and you're off the Internet".
A spokesman for Virgin Media said: "We have been in discussions with rights holders organisations about how a voluntary scheme could work. We are taking this problem seriously and would favour a sensible voluntary solution...the BPI has teams of technicians to trace illegal music downloading to individual accounts. It will hand these account numbers over to Virgin Media, which will match them to names and addresses."
BPI plans to send warning letters for first time offenders, a temporary suspension of Internet services for the "second strike" and finally a full disconnection for the final strike.