Unless ISPs and copyright owners agree on a plan to tackle online...

It includes a review of potential barriers to investment in next-generation broadband networks. The U.K. said it sees “the value of the current discussions” between providers and rights-holders and would prefer voluntary pacts or contracts among the industries involved but if needed will legislate, it said. The government will seek comments this year on how to structure and word legislation that could take effect by April 2009. Tougher enforcement is on the table, said the government. The U.K. Intellectual Property Office will eye options under which business would pay for efforts to stop physical and online IP theft, for a national center to help authorities learn to fight IP crime, and for a ministerial- industry forum where rights-owners, consumers, government and technology companies can discuss new technology. The government will seek comments on authorizing magistrate courts to levy exceptional fines for online and physical copyright infringement. British Phonographic Industry Chief Executive Geoff Taylor praised government’s “holistic view” of the country’s creative economy and said proposals to make ISPs address file-sharing and beef up enforcement “show that the government fully understands the importance of copyright to creators.” The legislative timetable on file-swapping “means that it is now or never for ISPs” to forge workable agreements with rights owners, he said. Any move to involve ISPs in combatting illegal sharing of copyrighted material -- legislative or self-regulatory -- must be “legal, workable and economically sustainable, with cost recovery secured for ISPs,” said the Internet Services Providers’ Association. ISPs want a non-legislative means sensitive to the complex legal framework in which they work, the group said. EU and U.K. law limits providers’ sanctions against users’ private communications, but the ISPA is committed to addressing rights-holders’ wish for a workable approach to issuing notices to individual infringers, the organization said. But, it said, ISPs have no legal responsibility for illegal file-sharing, because the content isn’t hosted on their servers.