“Dear Mrs Blackbeard – Thank you again for choosing All-You-Can-Eat Broadband as your internet service provider. We’re pleased to see that you and your family are already making abundant use of our Healthy Appetite starter subscription, and we will shortly be in contact inviting you to upgrade, for a modest additional monthly payment, to our Gargantua package. A propos – our partners at the BPI have suggested, in the nicest possible way, that we should write to you about your son No-beard’s downloads . . .”

You only have to imagine the tortured letter internet service providers (ISPs) would write to their allegedly piratical customers to see how uncomfortable their trial partnership with the UK record labels could be. (You don’t have to imagine it – Virgin Media, which started an “education campaign” with the BPI, the UK music industry association, in May, is already sending its version out.)