There's plenty wrong with copyright laws in this country. Instead of fixing those things though, the government want ISPs to do their dirty work, monitor everything you download and ban users from the internet if they download copyrighted material. There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start!

1. It's an invasion of privacy. This is the most immediately obvious problem. That's fair enough if you're one of those downloading illegal content, but it's essentially treating everyone as guilty (by stripping them of their right to privacy) until proven innocent. There isn't even a "reasonable grounds for suspicion" protection.

2. It's not technologically feasible. Discussing this very issue, one ISP that monitors the types of traffic on their network quite closely reports that 40% of BitTorrent (a popular filesharing application) is now encrypted. What this means is that the technology already exists, and is quite widely used, to prevent interception and examination of data. It's not the first time the politicians have gone riding in half-cocked without understanding what they're talking about when it comes to the series of tubes known in technical circles as "the internet" though. Did they really think 22 MPs signing an Early Day Motion "demanding" faster broadband speeds in the countryside would alter the laws of physics?

3. It would be expensive. The government keeps talking about its priority to improve broadband access (there's even a minister responsible for it!). How is that objective going to be affected when ISPs have to jack up their prices to pay for the development and/or purchase of this monitoring software which will probably prove ineffective in the longrun anyway?

There's a few issues to start with anyway (and I've not even touched on the many ways in which piracy actually benefits consumers by forcing big companies to reform their monopoly-abusing habits, that's for another day). As I've said before, there are bigger issues with UK copyright law as it stands than spotty teenagers downloading music or films in their darkened bedrooms and the government are coming at this, as government is inclined to do, from completely the wrong side of the argument.