—The Rights Agency would be created to draft codes of conduct under which Ofcom would police this, with input from ISPs and rightsholders - effectively an invitation for the industry to create its own codes. If it can’t, Ofcom would be given “backstop powers” to author its own code.

—The government is putting faith in recent research showing a majority of freeloaders would stop after being warned - because “most people, given a reasonable choice, would much prefer not to do wrong”. But will it work? Carter wants to cut online piracy by 70 percent; the code would tell Ofcom to review the extent of any reduction after six or 12 months.

—If the review finds the target has not been met, Ofcom’s powers will extend to telling ISPs to initiate measures including blocking sites by IP or URL, blocking transfer protocols and traffic through ports, bandwidth throttling, bandwidth shaping and filtering out content. These would be used “if, and only if” the warning system doesn’t work.

So there are some new measures, hinted at in the interim report, but the industry is for now being left to get on without wide-ranging IP enforcement reform and the overriding thrust is on creating a “framework to encourage legal downloads” (vogue-ish music streaming site Spotify is mentioned, as is US VOD site Hulu). But this isn’t the end of the road, or the debate. Expect a robust discussion in coming months in which ISPs may question why they are being asked to police their customers and entertainment companies ask why it is just serious offenders being targeted when casual, low-level file-sharing is just as damaging.

—The report recommends that the penalty for online copyright abuse is matched with the existing penalties for physical abuse at a maximum of £50,000 in a magistrate’s court. The government also proposes legislation to allow the rights to “orphan works”, content without a known copyright owner, to be sold commercially by collecting societies.

—The report also reveals plans to create a £10 million “test bed” programme to fund non-commercial testing of IP protection and monetisation schemes, as recommended by NESTA in its report submission. The “safe harbours” will allow companies to test online models in trials involving real users; the report suggest “new monetisation methods” for VOD and online music.

(Photo: peasap, some rights reserved)