This January, British ISPs will start their piracy notification campaign. Assisted by the copyright owners and the local government, the Internet service providers will send out email warning to subscribers whose connections are noticed pirating content. So, how does it work?

This program is part of the Creative Content UK initiative, along with anti-piracy PR campaigns targeted at the general public. The first ISPs will start sending out alerts later in January. BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are all confirmed to be participating, and smaller ISPs can join them later. Thus far, the initiative has announced no detail or specifics on how the program will work, but some issues are clear.

For example, it is understood that the notification system will only apply to P2P file-sharing (largely BitTorrent), but will not not cover Usenet providers, streaming services or cyberlockers. This means that the UK program only covers a part of all online piracy. As for the program scale, anyone whose Internet account has been used to share copyrighted content via P2P is a target. On the other hand, the parties have set a cap on the warnings at 2.5m annually.

The exact content of alerts might differ between companies, but they are primarily meant to inform customers that their Internet connection has been used to share infringing material and to point them to legal alternatives.

Third-party firm MarkMonitor, also known as a technology partner for the US Copyright Alert System, will monitor file-sharing activities. However, it must be said that the UK copyright alerts program provides no disconnections or mitigation measures for repeat infringers. In any case, file-sharers have plenty of options to bypass the program.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.