The government wants ISPs to act against illegal file-sharing and the prospect of a 'three strikes and you're out' system still looms large over EU countries; so doesn't it make sense for the likes of Virgin Media to bring in its own, less Draconian measure like a non-threatening letter?

I’m far from an ISP apologist – some of the traffic management/shaping measures are, frankly, out of order on so-called ‘unlimited’ broadband services and there’s a long way to go until I trust the advertised speeds.

But in the case of the recent Virgin/BPI furore I actually think that a lot of the media seems to have missed the bigger picture.

The fact is that unless the ISPs can come up with something that keeps the government (and the copyright holders) happy we may find ourselves in a horrible situation where our often ham-fisted politicians step into to impose their will on a situation that they have very little understanding of.

So what do you do?

So, I ask myself, what’s the absolute bare minimum the ISPs can do to stave off the bleatings of the BPI and the pressure of the government?

The conclusion I came to: it might well be an ‘educational’ letter that points out that transgressions are occurring but contains no legal threat and isn’t, if Virgin’s PR is to be believed, a first strike with further actions to follow.

Should we trust that the letter is as far as it will go?

Records

Well Virgin Media will keep records of who has received a letter, officially to make sure that the company doesn’t send multiple letters to people who are tracked by the BMI as downloading copyrighted material numerous times. But it is insistent that its new policy is not for nefarious means.

Virgin Media also, as you would expect, promises that the details of which customers belong to which IP address will remain within the company telling me: “customer privacy is of the highest importance to Virgin Media.

“We would never give out details of our customers private details to a third party unless we were forced to by a court order.”

In an ideal world there would be no letter, just like there would be no DRMs and the government would not be threatening its own nonsensical measures.

But the hard fact is: unless the ISPs bring in some kind of measure then we could find ourselves in a dreadful situation where Big Brother dictates out internet usage.

So if the letter system stays just like it is – as informative and not threatening – and the repercussions stay as they are, maybe, just maybe, this isn’t such a terrible thing after all.