Surprise surprise, ISPs are angry at suggestions that they will be forced to disconnect customers for copyright infringement.

This isn’t exactly news as far as copyright holders are concerned. We’ve known for ages, because of the capricious and unhelpful way that ISPs act when we ask them to remove illegal copies of our material, that they are, on the whole, supporters of copyright infringement. They may not admit it, of course, but since it drives use of bandwidth, encourages customers to use their services and results in a net revenue stream for them, it’s pretty easy to see why they would support it.

It’s also interesting to consider the comments of Rupert Goodwins, one of ZD Net’s editors. Interesting because the press, particularly the dead tree variety, has also been largely pro-infringement—as long as we aren’t talking about their content, anyway. Predictably, therefore, Goodwins trots out the ISPs’ tropes about how expensive and impractical it will be, how it might infringe peoples’ human rights, how there isn’t enough evidence that it’s really harming peoples’ livelihoods and so on. He even at one point talks about ISPs having to “cut off their own customers… for no reason”. Not to mention implying that the changes to the proposals have something to do with Peter Mandelson’s meeting with David Geffen.