Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, has watered down a pledge to cut the volume of internet music piracy by 70 per cent in the next two years in a letter he wrote at the end of last month, a copy of which has been passed to The Times.

A promise had been made in July last year to reduce “file sharing by 70 per cent in two to three years” as part of a three-way agreement between the Government, internet service providers and media companies. File sharing is where people make songs and other media on their computers available for copying to other computers over the internet.

That target has been quietly set back, with Mr Bradshaw writing that the two- to three-year timescale was “based on the premise” that measures to combat piracy would be “taken from July 2008 onwards”. Those adopted to date have been modest.

The sanctions agreed on last July were that warning letters would be written on a trial basis to internet subscribers with a connection through which piracy had been taking place. Leading internet service providers, including Virgin Media, BT and Carphone Warehouse, agreed to participate, but the results of the programme have yet to be published.

Mr Bradshaw, writing to Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, in a letter dated June 22, said that “a more constructive approach” would be “to take as our starting point the time at which obligations on internet service providers take effect” — effectively setting the target back by at least 18 months.

Responding, Mr Foster said: “This is another example of the Labour Government’s total inability to meet its own targets. Having wasted years, they now want to move the goalposts and hope we don’t notice.”

Cutting back rampant online piracy, which cost the music industry an estimated £180 million in 2007, has become a goal of Gordon Brown’s administration, despite widespread scepticism that it is impossible to control the flow of media on the internet.

Last month’s Digital Britain White Paper reiterated the 70 per cent target, without mentioning when it might be achieved. November’s planned Digital Economy Bill, following on from the White Paper, is expected to introduce a legal requirement that internet service providers continue to write warning letters to households where piracy is found to have taken place. It will also insist that internet service providers hand over “personal details” of “serious repeat infringers” so that they can be taken to court.

That Bill is not likely to come into law until 2010, at the earliest, at least 18 months after the original commitment to reduce piracy by 70 per cent was given. The planned law will also say that if the letter-writing campaign fails after six to twelve months, Ofcom, the media watchdog, has been given the right to seek more draconian sanctions, such as blocking access to pirate sites for all UK internet users and capping or slowing down internet connections to make piracy next to impossible, or even filtering users’ internet traffic.

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