Carphone Warehouse, owners of ISPs TalkTalk and AOL UK, have dug their heels in over the recent demands from the government and the BPI to shop customers who illegally download copyrighted material over P2P networks.

In a statement, Charles Dunstone said that: “Our position is very clear, 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,” and stated that should a legal decision to make a ‘three strike’ policy a requisite for ISPs happen, then Carphone would do everything in its power to challenge that:

“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. We believe that a fundamental part of our role as an ISP is to protect the rights of our users to use the Internet as they choose. We will fight any challenge to the sanctity of this relationship with every legal option available to us.”

The BPI’s response: “We passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward. TalkTalk claims it is their role to ‘protect the rights of their customers to use the internet as they choose’. We strongly disagree on this point when that usage is illegal. Contrary to TalkTalk’s claims, passing advice on to their customers is not ‘unreasonable’ or ‘unworkable’. We are not asking ISPs to act as the police. We are asking them to act on information we provide to them.”

Last week it was revealed that Virgin Media were only too keen to buddy up with the BPI – presumably because they want government to be on their side when the time comes to pass judgement on the numerous disputes with Sky. Carphone Warehouse is also the only ISP out of the three who have climbed into bed with the controversial Phorm – the others being Virgin and BT – who have gone out of their way to stress that an ‘opt-out’ will be available to all users.

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