In November last year, Sarkozy revealed a plan in which ISPs in France will have the power to disconnect persistent copyright infringers on their networks. Under the terms of the deal between ISPs, copyright owners and government officials, ISPs have agreed to experiment with technologies to filter out infringing content on their networks.

The report, which was released today, stated that this plan shows that “disconnecting the accounts of serious infringers is feasible and reasonable for ISPs”.

In its report, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) asks for more countries to follow in the footsteps of France and has acknowledged the efforts taken by the UK and Swedish governments in the light of the Gowers Report and the Renfors Report, both of which addressed the importance of ISPs in online music piracy. The report explained that ISPs have the technical ability to curb copyright abuse along with a commercial incentive. It added that online piracy is affecting the ISPs’ existing business by absorbing 50% to 70% of their bandwidth and it is expected to increasingly hurt their future business, as they will compete to share in the revenues from copyrighted digital content such as music, film and television.

In last year’s report, the IFPI stated that it will target ISPs in 2007 and take them to court, however there weren’t instances of that happening. John Kennedy, IFPI chairman and CEO acknowledged that fact and said: “2007 was the year ISP responsibility started to become an accepted principle. 2008 must be the year it becomes reality.”

In China last year, the IFPI successfully sued Yahoo for illegally providing links to copyright-infringing music files, a ruling upheld by the Beijing Court in December. However, in the same country, it lost its claim against Baidu.com, a website which also offers mp3 search services.

The report also noted that tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007 and the ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold is about 20 to 1.

Other trends that are believed to have contributed to the increase in unauthorized file-sharing on P2P networks include the expansion of broadband in markets such as China and Latin America.