Virgin Media UK plans to step up spying on its cable subscribers

Virgin Media, the United Kingdom's largest broadband supplier, has announced plans to work with the British Phonographic Industry to try to curtail illegal file-sharing. Anyone found sharing copyrighted music for free will receive letters (threating disconnection and prosecution) in this inital 10-week campaign.

The BPI is pushing for a "three strikes" rule -- after three infractions, you'll be booted off of Virgin's service, or pulled into court.

Virgin Media is not required to do this by law, so it makes one wonder what is encouraging them to team-up with the BPI. In the U.K, there is an estimated 6.5 million broadband users who share copyrighted files. If Virgin where to disconnect these millions of people from their cable service, it would seem that would hurt their profit margins somewhat.

Possible problems also arise with determining the illegal use of file sharing networks. A customer, for example, could be offering a self-made song over P2P networks that has a title similar to a copyrighted one, and then could mistakenly be warned for copyright enfringment. Or if you do not use encryption for your home WiFi network, it is also possible that somebody else could be downloading files off of your connection.