Stephen Carter: evil genius!

Poison pill defence against both Ofcom (his erstwhile employees) and the next Tory government: cut copyright violators by 70% in a year by saying 'no, don't'. If that doesn't work, adopt Plan B - deliberate Parliament-ordered anti-pirate throttling without a court order! You couldn't make it up...

"Government will also provide for backstop powers for
Ofcom to place additional conditions on ISPs aimed at reducing or preventing online copyright infringement by the application of Blocking (Site, IP, URL), Protocol blocking, Port blocking, Bandwidth capping Bandwidth shaping, Content identification and filtering– or a combination of these measures"

- unless file-sharing is reduced by 70% in 6 months, Ofcom's job!

Its almost exactly what was ruled unconstitutional in France last week - graduated response without a court ruling, to restrict users' access.

Note that it applies after 12 months of Ofcom's notification procedure - i.e. after the Election!