The music industry today announced a major escalation of its campaign against illegal file-sharing, unveiling 459 legal actions against music "uploaders" and for the first time targeting Europe's two largest music markets, the UK and France.
Announcing the actions on behalf of the recording industry worldwide, IFPI warned that the rolling campaign will be further stepped up and extended into new countries in the coming months. It called on music fans to buy their music online legitimately, rather than risk the legal consequences of illegal file-sharing. There are now over 100 legal online music sites in Europe offering a total of over one million music tracks.
Today's action is the largest single wave of lawsuits to be announced outside the USA since the industry in Europe started bringing litigation against illegal file-sharing in March 2004. It brings the total number of cases so far launched in Europe to more than 650 in six countries.
Besides the UK and France, new actions are being brought today in Italy, Denmark and Germany, and the campaign is also extending for the first time to Austria.
The cases, a combination of criminal and civil suits, are aimed at "uploaders" - people charged with putting hundreds of copyrighted songs on to internet file-sharing networks and offering them to thousands or millions of people world-wide without permission from the copyright owners. The defendants are likely to face compensation payments averaging several thousand euros.
In countries where cases have already been settled, identified uploaders are already paying compensation. As a result of actions brought in March, so far more than 80 people in Germany and Denmark have handed over individual payments of up to 13,000 euros.
