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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

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The Belgium newspaper Association Copiepresse has initiated a legal complaint against the European Commission (EC) arguing that it infringes its copyright through the NewsBrief and NewsExplorer aggregation services.

Copiepresse became famous for its copyright suit against Google and other search engines claiming copyright infringement over the aggregation services done by the search engines. The association has initiated a new action in the Belgian Court of Seizures considering that the European Commission is counterfeiting its member's news articles by using small part of them in order to prepare a news collation marketed as NewsBrief and NewsExplorer.

The Belgium Court rejected the Copiepresse claim, confirming the EC opinion

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The IMCO (Internal Market Committee) and ITRE (Committee on Industry, Research and Energy) committees of the European Parliament (EP) adopted on the 7 July 2008 the Telecom package, including the amendments that were considered by some NGOs as endangering the principle of the neutrality of the Internet.

One of the MEPs supervising the Telecom package, including the amendments to the five directives that should reform the EU legal framework on electronic communications has explained that the vote on these amendments had nothing to do with copyright enforcement: "There has been a great deal of dismay in the committee at the interpretation being put on these amendments.(...) The

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With France taking over the presidency of the European Union on 1 July 2008, the French Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel, wants to get a consensus in the fight against p2p downloading by translating the French model to the entire Europe.

Christine Albane presented on 19 June to the French Council of Ministers her proposal for the controversial Internet and Creation law, initiated first by Denis Olivennes, former CEO of Fnac, designed to fight online piracy, mainly through the implementation of the so-called "three-strikes" scheme. A newly-created independent authority, entitled HADOPI (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet), is to be

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An appeal from three European NGOs - La Quadrature du Net, netzpolitik.org and EDRi-member Open Rights Group - reveal some disturbing MEPs amendments to the draft directives to reform the EU framework on electronic communications (telecom package).

The review of the telecom package was merely focusing on telecom-related issues (except for discussions on the ePrivacy directive, which is the subject of another EDRi-gram article in the current issue), but some of the 800 amendments on the 5 directives that form the current package might go further than just establishing the rules for a functioning electronic communications market and could endanger the principle of the neutrality of

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As a continuation of the actions started in March 2008, and despite opinions that ISPs should not act as an Internet police, the major British record labels represented by British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and Virgin Media, UK's largest provider of home broadband, have joint forces in a campaign meant to fight illegal music downloads.

Virgin Media has started warning Internet users illegally downloading music that they may be prosecuted, by sending letters to thousands of households where such activities have taken place.

This appears to be the first step in the attempt of BPI to get ISPs to implement a "three strikes and out" rule, meaning warning and ultimately disconnecting the estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are used

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A new international trade agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is now under discussion might strengthen criminal sanctions against BitTorrent tracker sites for exploiting copyright material online.

The tracker sites state they do not profit from Internet users sharing music, movies and software, saying that the server and bandwidth costs are supported by donations and advertising revenues. However, rights holder organisations claim that BitTorrent administrators exploit copyright material online and make a nice profit out of it.

A discussion paper that has been leaked online by Sunshine Media, the company that runs the Wikileaks.org website, is under circulation now among

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Despite the criticism and negative reaction of the ISPs in several countries, IFPI continues to pressures them in turning themselves into Internet police. Following Denmark, Norway and Ireland, it is the turn of the Swedish ISPs to be the target of the association.

What IFPI asks is for ISPs to restrict their customers' access to websites allegedly facilitating copyright infringement. As until now it had little success in its discussions with the ISPs, IFPI has decided to use legal pressure. "We believe that ISPs have a special part to play in this and must help us. The discussions we've tried to have with the ISPs haven't led anywhere" said IFPI's Managing Director in Sweden, Lars Gustafsson.