The latest developments in internet piracy protections comes with the UK Government’s Digital Britain Report. Published Wednesday, The Bookseller reports that it “proposes that internet service providers (ISPs) should be obliged to notify subscribers identified as infringing copyright and to maintain an anonymised database of repeat infringers. The Government wants to see ISPs cut illegal filesharing on their networks by 70% within a year, and is giving additional powers to the communications regulator Ofcom.”

But, according to The Bookseller, this in no way satisfied the Publishers Association. The PA “warned that the Government’s proposals for combating illegal filesharing fall short of what the publishing industry urgently needs….if effective action was not taken piracy could “suffocate” the nascent digital publishing market.”

The report is being roundly criticized. Amanda Andrews in the Telegraph wrote, ” The report lacks substance and, on the whole, fails to make the concrete decisions the industry had been hoping for. And there are doubts over whether a large number of the suggested proposals will be executed.”

And the Guardian notes that the Digital Britain report is running into serious political crossfire, saying the Conservative party “slammed the report as ‘digital dithering from a dated government’. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, told the House of Commons that the long-awaited report was a ‘colossal disappointment’.”

The disappointment pile-on seems complete with Publishers Association chief executive Simon Juden warning in The Bookseller, “If Government waits years before it takes effective action then piracy may get a stranglehold on the nascent digital publishing market and suffocate it completely. The consequences will be an absence of legitimate digital delivery models, a dearth of quality digital content and the loss of thousands of jobs in the creative sector.”

Pirates:1, Publishers: 0

You can view the final report here and the Telegraph list the highlights here.