The entertainment industry on Thursday continued efforts to convince ISPs they should filter pirated material from their networks. "If they can reduce some of the infringing content, then there will be more capacity for their paying customers," insists MPAA CTO John Williams. "Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods," Williams said at a technology policy conference in Hollywood. "Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers," he says.

Great, other than the fact that people who pay for bandwidth aren't "free riders," and an ISP that begins filtering P2P content can expect to lose a significant number of customers to an ISP that doesn't. Verzion's been a voice of reason on this front of late because their decision to actually invest in capacity (instead of whining about people actually using it) allows them to avoid capping, throttling or other unpopular practices. At the same conference they stated they remain unwilling to be piracy police:This lack of enthusiasm is why the entertainment industry is trying to get mandatory filtering laws passed on an international scale.