Not letting ISPs forget they have a part to play the battle against online music piracy, new EMI Music CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti is calling on them to play a bigger role and stop the costly leaking of copyrighted material to file-sharing networks. He tells Times Online: “Internet service providers play a significant role because they own the pipe ... In England, we know there is a lot of water and content filtering wastefully through the pipes across the country. The pipe owner has a responsibility to close the holes.” Six UK ISPs last year agreed to “educate” freeloading customers through warning letters, but they oppose the idea of making them responsible for the content they carry.

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Leoni-Sceti, who joined EMI in October last year, is to make a speech this week to music industry chiefs in which he is expected to welcome Lord Carter’s somewhat vague interim Digital Britain proposals that would ask labels and ISPs to continue writing warnings to freeloaders. But he is expected to call for them to be “much more clear and prescriptive”. According to his own research, 20 percent of Britain’s £1.3 billion annual revenue comes from digital—but only 10 percent of downloaded music is legally acquired.