Bermuda’s internet service providers are looking at drawing up a code of conduct for copyright infringement and working out the best way to inform offenders.The ISPs currently have an acceptable use policy as part of their terms and conditions which states that using internet services for illegal activity (which may include downloading content such as software, games, music, and videos without the owner’s permission) is a violation of their policy and the law which can result in restriction, suspension or termination of the user’s service.Vicki Coelho, general manager of North Rock Communications, said that the question of liability was very complex.She said that the ISPs felt there was a lack of understanding about the issue and there was a need to educate the community about it.The campaign arose from a working group meeting of ISPs, and representatives from the then Ministry of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce and the Office of the Registrar General in December 2009 to understand the potential liabilities of users downloading content or material including music, books and other materials protected by copyright without obtaining permission of the owner of that content.The Motion Picture Association of America has targeted end users who have infringed copyright issues in the US as well as a number of providers in other countries with mixed results.A report released last week by MarkMonitor, which helps companies monitor their trademarks online, revealed that online trafficking of pirated content and counterfeit goods was “rampant”.The firm used publicly available internet traffic data to examine several sites that offered counterfeit luxury goods or prescription drugs for sale or allowed users to download, stream or share pirated movies, television shows, music, software or video games, finding that 67 percent of the pirated sites were hosted in the US or Western Europe.Focusing on 10 “media brands”, it discovered 43 sites offering pirated content which attracted a total of 146 million visits per day on average and an estimated 53 billion visits per year.And in the first case of its kind, an Australian court in February last year ruled that an ISP was not responsible for illegal downloading.iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP, was taken to court by a group of 34 movie production houses, including the Australian divisions of Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox, claiming it was guilty of copyright infringement for not preventing illegal down- loads of films.They called for iiNet to warn the offenders and then cut them off if they continued to download as well as blocking certain websites, but the judge ruled iiNet was not responsible for the online behaviour of its customers.Jennifer Mahoney, assistant vice-president of marketing at Logic Communications, said she was glad that the industry was able to take a collective stance against copyright infringement and that the next step was educating the consumer.Bill Dickinson, general manager of FKBtransact, said that the ISPs had met several times to discuss the topic and were all on the same page.