Forcing internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent illegal downloading could put smaller providers out of business, according to one industry expert.

ISPreview.co.uk – an independent source of UK ISP news, listings, reviews and discussion – claims that placing the burden of identifying whether or not an individual has been involved in piracy on ISPs could put an undue strain on businesses' resources.

Mark Jackson, editor-in-chief of ISPreview.co.uk, argued that by putting this burden of proof on the ISP effectively makes them a "security service".

He said: "Consequently the ISP would need to log utterly unbelievable amounts of data and employ a team able to deal with and investigate such requests.

"Perhaps larger ISPs could afford this but smaller ones almost certainly could not."

Last week the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry published its Digital Music Report 2008, which said that governments are "starting to accept that ISPs should take a far bigger role in protecting music on the internet".

The report claims that tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007, although legal digital music sales were also up by $2.9 billion (£1.45 billion) globally in 2007 – a 40 per cent increase on 2006.


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