People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net,
Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.
Speaking at a government-sponsored forum to debate copyright issues he said the
UK would introduce a similar policy to France.
It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing
disconnection from the network.
The issue has divided the telecoms and media industries.
Mr Mandelson said that cutting internet connections would be a "last resort".
"I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two
notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have
the opportunity to appeal," he told the audience at the C&binet Forum, a
talking shop set up by government to debate the issues facing the creative
industries.
The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more
relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said.
The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would
take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he
said.
Mr Mandelson praised the UK's creative industries, which are worth around 16bn
and employs 2 million people.
ILLEGAL FILE-SHARING
content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights
BitTorrent, and websites, such as The Pirate Bay, to find and download files
such as some on-demand TV services
But it has been eroded in recent years, he said, by new ways of accessing
content.
"I was shocked to learn that only one in 20 music tracks in the UK is
downloaded legally. We cannot sit back and do nothing," said Mr Mandelson.
The fact that young people now expect to download content for free was "morally
as well as economically unsustainable," he added.
But he emphasised that "legislation and enforcement can only ever be part of
the solution".
The long-term answer was for the industry to offer new and cheaper ways to
download content, he said.
In France the government has just approved a so-called three strikes policy.
Under its system, those identified as illegally downloading content would
initially be sent warning letters and, if they failed to comply, could be
removed from the network for up to a year.
UK internet service providers have argued that it is not their job to police
the network while content providers are keen to get due recompense for artists.
At the same forum, Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi, a French
content and internet service provider, called for a tough stance.
He believes the UK will damage its economy if it does not follow France and
clamp down on internet piracy.
"At Vivendi, we are in the content business, we are in the telecom business and
there is no internal debate," he told delegates at the C&binet forum.
"The priority is not to grow traffic on the ISPs. The priority is that
creators, people who develop content, should find a way [to be rewarded]."