regulator Ofcom has been working on the details for the controversial file-sharing clampdown.

It is due to publish a code of conduct in the next few weeks.

It will detail how the procedure will work, explaining how a copyright infringement report is sent, how the appeals procedure will work and how disputes between rights holders and ISPs will play out.

It is expected that this will be introduced for a year and, after that the process will be reviewed.

If it is considered to be ineffective, technical measures such as limiting the speed of a individual's service or temporarily suspending them from the net could be brought into effect.

Initially the code will be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers but pirates hoping to evade detection by migrating to smaller ISPs or mobile broadband services will not be able to do so for long as all service providers will eventually be expected to take part in the notification process.

Ofcom would be scrapped and regulators stripped of policy-making responsibilities by a Tory government, David Cameron said today.

Singled out for criticism in a speech proposing cutbacks to the myriad quangos administering various policy areas, the communications regulator's successor should only have technical responsibilities such as awarding licences, Cameron said. Policy decisions would be taken by ministers, rather than an "unaccountable bureaucracy".

"With a Conservative Government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist. Its remit will be restricted to its narrow technical and enforcement roles," he told the Reform think tank in London.

I never thought i'd say it.

I like David Cameron now.

(Before this, I hated them all equally)

It's not sharing if you only take

IIRC the laws state you have to have uploaded to be liable, otherwise you would be liable accessing any site with copyrighted content on it

Is 'seeding' considered uploading then?

I would say so as you are only uploading

I was thinking along the lines of people who are seeding a file as they're downloading, isn't that how it goes?

Many private tracker sites have limits on the ratio of uploads and downloads. If you do not seed enough you can get blacklisted from the sites for leeching.

Not being funny, but how desperate do you have to be to set up a VPN to seed on private trackers??

Torrents are handy, but they're hardly life and death. Just give me a viable bloody alternative!

It depends on how extreme the government get with the legislation.

if they make it worth while I am sure that many more will switch to VPN and encrypt all their traffic which the security services has said would be bad for their ability to track terrorists.