Despite of a huge coverage of anti filesharing plans of Government, the number of illegal peer to peer downloads has increased to an extent.

According to the findings of a latest research conducted by the music industry body, BPI, the levels of peer to peer (P2P) filesharing has been increased on the last six months. The pirates have made plans to enhance their downloading into 2010. A study was conducted which involved around 3,442 Brits aged 16 to 54. Out of 3,442 Brits, more than 1,000 Brits admitted that they downloaded music in illegal way. It was also found by the study that the number of people taking help of non- P2P methods for downloading music illegally online in 2009 has increased to some extent. For sharing files online, many new methods have been introduced including newsgroups, MP3 search engines and forum, MP3 pay sites, blog and board links to online digital storage sites which are commonly called as cyberlockers.

Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, said, “There are now more than thirty-five legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally. It’s disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It’s vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.

He further added “The growth in other, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than P2P,” .

P2P has still maintained its popularity despite of rise in alternative downloading methods. An average of nine songs has been downloaded by the users per month followed by half of the people who download music illegally in this way once a week. A third of respondents stated that they download music by using P2P networks regularly.

A large number of warning letters has been issued by the Government  to illegal downloaders. Not only this, the Government has also warned  to disconnect repeat offenders in case levels of piracy will continue.
Although, the broadband providers are not in the favour of these measures. They think that the steps employed for identifying pirates will bring innocent users at risk of disconnection, and that the cost of policing the net might raise subscriptions by around £25 per year.
Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Research earlier this year by think tank Demos showed that illegal downloaders could be tempted away from their P2P networks by the right kind of service. 47% of people said that they were interested in legal, paid-for music downloads – a figure that interestingly rose to 72% among illegal downloaders, who were also shown to spend the most money on legal music.
“So what is needed is legal music downloads at the right price – the Demos study found that music sales could be doubled if the price of each track was reduced to 45p – compared to 69p, 79p and 99p, which are still common prices on some websites.”

According to a statement made by the broadband providers the £500 million bill for fighting Internet piracy plans could increase broadband subscriptions more by £25 per year.

Fighting against illegal music, film and software sharing online is the main aim of the Digital Economy Bill. It has now decided to warn the consumers who will be caught using illegal peer to peer sites. Not only this, it also made a promise to throttle or even disconnect the Internet connection of the repeat offenders. For court action, personal details of suspected offenders will be offered to the right holders.

As suggested by the Impact assessments, under the new bill, Internet connection of up to 40,000 homes could be inhibited whereas the cost of letter writing may increase the individual subscriptions up by £1.40.

Thee Government has made the promise of making the copyright holders pay a fixed fee to ISPs  in order to support them to cover their costs but broadband providers are calling them for making more contribution.

Impact assessments were published alongside the Bill indicating that in the next ten years, the move would generate £1.7 billion in extra sales for the music and film industries as well as £350 million for the Government in extra VAT.

Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk , told The Times: “Broadband consumers shouldn’t have to bail out the music industry. If they really think it’s worth spending vast sums of money on these measures then they should be footing the bill; not the consumer.”

John Petter, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division, added: “Put yourself in the shoes of a small businessman who has a rogue member of staff. Your Internet access could get cut off because of the actions of one individual. It really feels like the UK is out on a limb with these proposals compared to the rest of the world.”

There are many ISPs such as TalkTalk broadband, BT Broadband, Virgin media etc who are totally against the Government’s plans. They believe that the methods adopted for finding out the illegal downloaders are not reliable at all.

Presently,  for tracking the  illegal peer to peer activity, IP address is issued to your PC when you go online. According to a warning issued by the ISPs and industry experts,  the IP addresses can easily be copied, enciphered, hidden and even hijacked which can cause disconnection of  innocent people from the net.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “The Government has already admitted that these measures will force tens of thousands of low-income households to give up their broadband connection – even as the Government works to increase take up in disadvantaged communities. Consumers are already facing a £6 a year increase on their line rental, and shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes of a minority of people. ”

With the joining of a chip shop worker, BT has now become the UK’s biggest broadband provider. It become 5 millionth broadband customer of BT.

After signing up Glaswegian chip shop worker Elizabeth Patterson as its “five-million woman”, BT Broadband has now become the biggest broadband provider in the UK. It was stated by BT that this increase of broadband is occurring fastly. In just two years, it signed up its final one million.

According to a statement made by John Petter, managing director of BTs consumer division, he was  pleased with the strong BT take-up when the number of non-fibre optic broadband customers in the UK is 14 million.

He said: “We believe bringing the content of things like iPlayer and ITVPlayer to the TV set via broadband is going to have transformational effect when we launch Project Canvas with our partners next year.”
It  has also been claimed by BT that by summer 2012, the fibre broadband will definitely reach around  12 million homes.

Ian Livingston, BT chief executive, said: “We need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is. BT is the only company currently planning to invest large sums in this area but we can only go so far with our shareholders’ money.”

Michael Phillips, product director at Broadbandchoices.co.uk, said: “It’s a good day for BT, which has had rivals like cable broadband provider Virgin Media and TalkTalk , which acquired Tiscali earlier this year, snapping at its heels.

“It’s taken this opportunity to push the debate on financial public sector support for Digital Britain and it will be interesting to see how the powers-that-be respond.”