Six of the UK's biggest net providers have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online.

The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music.

Hard core file-sharers could see their broadband connections slowed, under measures proposed by the UK government.

BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, which represents the music industry, said: "All of the major ISPs in the UK now recognise they have a responsibility to deal with illegal file-sharers on their networks."

Mr Taylor said it had taken years to persuade ISPs to adopt this view.

A deep rift is already emerging between the ISPs and music industry bodies who have agreed to clamp down on illegal file sharing.

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However, there's still a massive divide between ISPs and the BPI over how to punish repeat offenders, with the Carphone Warehouse telling PC Pro it would walk out on any deal which saw its customers' broadband connections cut off.

"The Three strikes approach we've 100% ruled out," the Carphone spokesman told us. "We won't have anything to do with that."

"We will not disconnect or threaten to disconnect our customers. We will not divulge details of our customers to people like the BPI unless we get a specific court order to do so."

"What we have agreed to do is to write to our customers and advise them there's been an alleged infringement. We're very clear that we don't know if that's the case or not, we've just been told there has been and we want to advise them of that.

"We certainly won't pass over their details and we certainly won't disconnect them."