Daniel Long warns that the free ride might soon be over for P2P pirates around the world. But will a crackdown on music and movie sharing really work?

In the land of the rising sun, where the Internet is a way of life, the gizmo loving Japanese are struggling to come to terms with new changes to their downloading habits. Last month, Japanese newspaper,Yomiuri Shimbun , detailed how over 1000 ISPs in the country had banded together in an attempt to crack down on customers who have been downloading off popular P2P programs and would disconnect those who can't heed the warnings. Japan, with their cute dancing robots and super speed connections - are courting a policy that could be considered extremely radical for 'pirate friendly' Asia, a part of the world where most Asian countries have no such restrictions on their P2P downloads. Not yet anyway.

The planned Japanese strategy is similar to ones being explored elsewhere in the world, including France and recently, England. Each of these countries are steadily pushing towards a variation of the 'three strike policy' that can result in a customer's internet service being disconnected permanently. The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) which represents the record industries among others, recently presented the EU with a proposal that would block all access to P2P sites and pressure ISPs to install mandated filters.

And while things may seem quiet on the P2P front here, Australia is also starting to experience gradual changes.

Earlier last month, West Australian ISP Exetel announced that they would begin to prohibit customers from browsing any web pages after they had been sent infringement notices from a valid legal copyright holder. They would be barred from any future web browsing, until the customer had shown that the issue was properly resolved. Will it be long before the three strikes policy finds its ways to our golden shores as well?

What the ISPs might not be willing to admit yet, is the large extent of which P2P traffic counts as overall internet traffic. This was shown recently when a Danish court ruled that torrent megasite, the 'Pirate Bay' was deemed to be operating illegally under Danish law. One Danish ISP was forced to bar access of its customers to the site, and even then, total internet traffic in Denmark surged 12%, largely attributed to P2P file trading.

It all seems a little extreme to push the issue 'underground', where it becomes even harder to police. I question the business practice behind cutting P2P distribution and whether it would make any financial sense for this to work in practice. It has also become fairly evident that the ISPs are not really keen on policing the actions of P2P downloaders, but are being forced by the copyright holders into making an 'effort' to look like they are.

P2P encourages extra downloads, more expensive download quotas and that ultimately translates to bigger profit revenues. If an ISP banned half its customer base for downloading, wouldn't that give each miffed customer the onus to find another ISP, thereby granting the ISP's competitor a profitable advantage? I really can't see how this will work in reality.

However Warner Music is looking at doing something that sounds like a step in the right direction. Well, one that doesn’t involve canceling people's Internet accounts at least.

Instead of turning customers into criminals, and encouraging the community to go underground, Warner - is spearheading an interesting idea that involves a kind of ISP/music tax. Copyright holders would be compensated for allowing customers to access unlimited P2P downloads. It's a trade off that will cost broadband customers a little extra on their monthly ISP fees, but gives customers the freedom to download P2P without fear of litigation.

A couple of countries, including Italy and Germany have also bucked the trend and have made it 'illegal' for ISPs to give up the identification of their subscribers. It's a fortunate reminder that some governments are not willing to be bullied in the P2P battle, while most are quickly giving into the mounting pressure and flying the white flag

For now, everybody wants a larger piece of the lucrative online download business, and yet, not many are willing to take responsibility for the larger problem. The P2P machine is not likely to stop any time soon, no matter the legalities, the filters or the political pressure.

What do you think? Would you be prepared to pay extra on top of your monthly Internet bill in exchange for music downloads? And how much would you pay?

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