Usually we’ve got much better things to do than watch what European politicians do, particularly in the summer, and that’s probably why they’ve chosen to vote on reforms to a telecoms law which could see a three strikes policy rolled out across EU member states.

We’ve been watching this issue for some time. Virgin Media has teamed up with the BPI, threatened alleged file-sharers and then backtracked. Campaigners believe that the proposed amendments to the Telecoms Bill will, in layman’s terms, force ISPs to pay more attention to what their customers are doing, issue “informative letters” to those suspected of illegally sharing copyrighted media, possibly cut people off from the Internet, and perhaps allow governments to decide what software is legitimate.