Business secretary Peter Mandelson is expected to outline how the UK government will deal with file-sharers on 28th October.

英国商务大臣Peter Mandelson将要于10月28号概述英国政府处理文件共享者的方法。

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Peter Mandelson intervened to toughen up UK piracy policy

He will lay out the plans at a government-sponsored forum² to debate how the creative industries should tackle copyright issues.

The issue has divided the telecoms and media industries.

Mr Mandelson has signalled that the UK government will consider removing persistent³（固执的，坚持的） file-sharers from the net.

He intervened（插入，调停） to toughen up the UK's original file-sharing policy, outlined in the Digital Britain report, to include the option of removing persistent file-sharers from the network.

In France the government has just approved a so-called three strikes policy.

Under its system, those identified as illegally downloading content would initially⁴ be sent warning letters and, if they failed to comply, could be removed from the network for up to a year.

UK internet service providers have argued that it is not their job to police the network while content providers are keen to get due recompense（报偿，赔偿） for artists.

Rewarding creators

At the same forum, Jean-Bernard Levy⁵, chief executive of Vivendi, a French content and internet service provider, called for a tough stance（踏脚处，位置）.

He believes the UK will damage its economy if it does not follow France and clamp down on（压制） internet piracy.

"At Vivendi, we are in the content business, we are in the telecom business and there is no internal debate," he told delegates at the C&binet forum, a talking shop set up by government to debate the issues facing the creative industries.

"The priority is not to grow traffic on the ISPs. The priority is that creators, people who develop content, should find a way [to be rewarded]."

David Lammy, the minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, was also at the event.

He asked if "infringement⁶（违反，侵犯） on a massive scale was a wake-up call to the creative industries".

"It is time to decide on the balance between anarchy⁷（无政府状态，混乱） and authority in the digital world. Freedom of access is not the same thing as access for free," he said.

Britain's creative industries were worth an estimated £60bn in 2006 but have been damaged in recent years by the rise of illegal downloading.

According to figures from analyst⁸ firm Forrester, 10% of UK internet users engage in illegal file-sharing.

The government has set itself the target of reducing the problem of file-sharing by at least 70%.