72. Highlights the need for European and national education campaigns to raise awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights and of the available legal channels through which audiovisual works are distributed online; points out that consumers should be properly informed about any issues relating to intellectual property rights that may arise when using file-sharing services in the context of cloud-computing services;

6. Calls on the Commission, together with BEREC in cooperation with Member States, closely to monitor the development of traffic-management practices and interconnection agreements, in particular in relation to blocking and throttling of, or excessive pricing for, VoIP and file sharing, as well as anticompetitive behaviour and excessive degradation of quality, as required by the EU ‘Telecoms’ regulatory framework; calls further on the Commission to ensure that internet service providers do not block, discriminate against, impair or degrade the ability of any person to use a service to access, use, send, post, receive or offer any conten ...[+++]t, application or service of their choice, irrespective of source or target;

Importantly, it distinguished between how commercial and non-commercial file-sharing is dealt with, opposing the criminalisation of the latter.

Some question whether the measures designed to address file sharing will in fact accomplish their purpose, noting that file sharing continues to flourish in the United States despite the much stronger copyright protections of its Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

It is not well suited to files shared on peer-to-peer networks, the most prevalent source of infringing material, since the files are actually located on the computers of the persons engaged in sharing”. 103

101 Indeed, concern has been raised that a “notice-and-takedown” regime could create incentives for ISPs to remove content without warning or evidence of actual infringement, which can potentially lead to a stifling of free expression.102 As well, the Industry Canada website argues that a “notice and takedown” regime would actually be ineffective in preventing peer-to-peer file sharing, as “notice and takedown” “typically applies only to material posted on websites.