Virgin Media, one of UK's largest broadband providers, is currently trialing deep packet inspection (DPI) technology that can determine what its users are downloading. The company claims that recorded data is anonymized and will be used to draw conclusions about illegal file-sharing in general.

The DPI technology used by Virgin Media has been developed by a company called Detica, which specializes in information intelligence services. A user's traffic is first sorted by type, such as email, browsing, online gaming, etc.

Only traffic generated by file-sharing applications is then subjected to a more in-depth scan. This has the purpose of determining what is being shared, hence the "deep inspection" in the technique's name. Apparently, the names of files extracted from this traffic will be checked against a database of copyrighted media titles.

According to The Sunday Times, Detica takes pride on its system being able to determine within seconds whether the downloaded file is legitimate or illegal. However, the key aspect is that there is no customer identification going on. The IP address is currently being stripped out as the system is only used to gather illegal file-sharing metrics over the ISP's network.

On the other hand, privacy advocates are not convinced and claim that this is only the beginning for a system that will ultimately be used to identify users who share copyrighted materials. Asked if the software is capable of that, a Virgin Media spokesperson noted that "It could be, but the technology hasn’t been designed for that purpose. The IP information is discarded. It allows us to understand the exact nature of unlawful traffic on our network."

The privacy advocate's fears are warranted since UK's Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Peter Mandelson seems to favor the "three-strike" approach to battling Internet piracy. According to this procedure, illegal file sharers should first be identified by ISPs, possibly through deep packet inspection, warned two times and ultimately disconnected from the Internet for repeated offenses.