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After the letters sent from Virgin Media to its customers on alleged file-sharing activities, British Telecom (BT), the UK's largest broadband provider, has started a similar activity.

The Register has received information from one of the BT subscribers that has received such a letter from the Customer Security Team stating: ""I have received a complaint regarding one of our customers offering copyrighted material over the internet. On investigation, I have found that your account was used to make this offer."

The letter contained evidence put forward by BPI, that was shared by BT with its customer and consisted, in this case, of the P2P programme Ares user agent, a time stamp, a file name and an IP address. The letter provided information on how to secure their WiFi connection, but also threaten with disconnection if similar activities continued: "Sorry, but we're obliged to point out that further similar problems may have to lead to the termination of your account, as such activity contravenes BT's Acceptable Use Policy."

More aggressive threats have been reported being sent by Virgin Media to approx 800 subscribers with the following text on the envelope: "Important. If you don't read this, your broadband could be disconnected". Virgin Media spokeswoman claimed that the text was a mistake and explained that this was part of an education campaign: ""We are not accusing our customers of doing anything, we are alerting them to the fact that illegal file sharing has been tracked to their account. This could have been someone else in the house or an unsecured wireless network. This is an education campaign."

In sending these letters, the ISPs do not share confidential information with BPI and do not monitor their users, but only receive from the BPI investigators the collected IP addresses of the customers having participated in alleged p2p copyrighted material sharing. The ISP identifies the exact individual and sends him (her) the template letter.

Even though the BPI campaign has attracted two of the major British ISPs in this "education campaign", other ISPs have promptly rejected such collaboration. Carphone Warehouse make it clear that they just give access to Internet: "We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet. I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer's account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing", said Charles Dunstone, the chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, to BBC.

Virgin admits disconnection threat mistake (3.07.2008)
http://www.out-law.com/page-9235

We won't cut off users, says Virgin (3.07.2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/03/virgin.filesharers

Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing (3.07.2008)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/virgin_letters_numbers/

BT starts threatening music downloaders with internet cut-off (26.06.2008)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/bt_bpi_letter/

EDRi-gram: British ISPs warn Internet downloaders on the risk of being prosecuted (18.06.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.12/british-isp-virgin-letters