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Music industry ready to declare victory of sorts with ISPs on file-sharing

An announcement on Thursday morning will see six big ISPs signing up to ... um, send letters to their customers

The BPI - which represents the largest labels in the UK music industry - is preparing a conference call which it calls "a major development in its campaign to improve partnerships between the music business & ISPs".

Six will be signing up with its letter-writing initiative. That's right, the one where they send you a letter telling you that your connection seems to be being used for file-sharing copyrighted music.

Among those joining will be Carphone Warehouse (in the guise of Talk Talk), which had previously sent the BPI away with a flea in its ear over the idea of policing its customers.

But is this really the victory that the BPI seems ready to announce? It doesn't sound much different from what we've heard before - and some ISPs, especially Virgin, have been at pains to point out that they're not going to cut anyone off for (alleged) file-sharing.

And what can the music industry hold out as encouragement for toeing its line? Its product - music. Such as the all-you-can-eat offering that Sky and Universal signed the other day.

So ahead of the official press conference (which is 9am Thursday), we'll wait for the fine detail on this one.

Over at the BBC, Rory Cellan-Jones is unconvinced too:

The BPI has a carrot-and-stick approach in its dealings with the ISPs - you crack down on pirates, and you can have a stake in what is still a pretty lucrative business. So far, the ISPs seem to be grabbing the carrot - while avoiding the stick.

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