Warnings would half piracy
March 16, 2009
Oxford Economics institute in UK says online piracy cost the industry £235 million (E253m) in 2008 – that's nearly half of the £531 million the group says was lost to piracy of all kinds. But the annual online loss could be reduced to £83.2 million if downloaders received an ISP warning and if detection technologies were deployed, said the group, which cited a previous EMR survey indicating the kind of education-and-warning campaign ISPs trialled with music groups last year are an effective deterrent.
The study advocates bandwidth throttling as a "significant inducement to refrain" from illegal downloading and says the "Rights Agency" proposed in Lord Carter's draft Digital Britain report would "act to reinforce the long-term obligations of ISPs and help ensure they do not fall asleep on the job".