Virgin Media has released a statement today denying reports that it had allegedly struck a deal with the British Phonographic Industry, Virgin Media acknowledged that it had discussed a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy with the music industry but that no commitment to the scheme was made.

Under the proposed ‘three strikes and you’re out’ scheme virgin media would have initially sent warning letters to customers that had been reported as obtaining illegal music over peer-2-peer file-sharing networks, these customers would be presented to Virgin Media in the form of IP address’s collected by the BPI or a company working for them most probably.

However it would seem Virgin Media consider this method of dealing with illegal music downloading as draconian and flawed with legal and privacy issues, also the cost of running such a scheme is not something Virgin Media want coming out of their yearly profit margins that are already in decline. Tiscali trialled a similar project last year which was discontinued when both parties Tiscali and the BPI could not come to an agreement as to who should cover the schemes costs.

A representative for Virgin Media said:

“There is no pilot in place. There are no details to confirm as we haven’t come to any sort of agreement with the BPI.

“The BPI wants the Government and ISPs to adopt the three-strikes system, we don’t want to go down to that level as it raises questions about privacy and funding.”

The Uk Goverment was pushing for a scheme like this to be implemented earlier this year when they said “ISPs must take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads or face legal sanctions.”

At the current time it looks although Virgin Media have no plans for a pilot scheme of the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ system, in the future however we may see this issue being raised in parliament and being enforced only time will tell.

And what did the BPI have to say on the subject.

“We can’t talk about the pilot and can’t give out details but we have outlined plans with Virgin and do have a dialogue with them. But there is no confirmation of a pilot.”

For now Virgin Media subscribers can rest easy for a while, at least unil they change their mind or are forced into the scheme.

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Tags | bpi, IP monitoring, legal, three strike, virgin media