By Jo Best, 12 April 2005 16:45
NEWS UK music industry trade body the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) has announced the latest move in its campaign against illegal file-sharers - proclaiming that it will be going to court to seek the disclosure of 33 more people suspected of uploading hundreds of music tracks to P2P networks.
The BPI has now taken legal action against 90 confirmed and suspected music pirates. The first wave of cases were settled earlier this year, with 23 file-sharers paying an average of £2,000 each.
Another 31 cases are still ongoing in the UK.
A BPI spokesman said the action was necessary because "it's obvious people are still file-sharing... the progress that's been made in terms of encouraging legal services has been great, but the message is not there to everyone".
He added the BPI "was not going to commit to further action".
The cases form part of a wider move by the global music industry to seek legal redress from suspected music pirates.
International music trade body the IFPI also revealed today that 963 suits had been filed against music pirates in 11 countries worldwide.
Finland, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands are suing music pirates for the first time, while Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the UK are continuing the policy of prosecuting illegal P2P users started last year. So far, 248 file-swappers have been collared across Europe, paying a fine of 3,000 on average.
The pirates have included a French chef, a German judge and a British local councillor, and have uploaded from hundreds to tens of thousands of files.
Japan has also filed several suits and is now the first Asian country to do so.
The cases pale in comparison to the legal action ongoing in the US - where 9,900 cases have been brought so far.
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Dr John Dimmock
What about VCR and common tape recordings - these have been in use for many years to copy and distribute music and film - seems to me to be a bit of a farce
2. Mark SPLINTER
but it isn't working. people naturally share music, lend books, show DVDs to all their mates, it's normal. Only the method changes, not the "problem".
3. John Woods
Mark Splinter wrote:
"people naturally share music, lend books, show DVDs to all their mates, it's normal. Only the method changes, not the 'problem'".
Surely a distinction should be made between 'all their mates' and 'millions of people they've never met'?
4. John Sniadowski
As others have commented, this may look like a farce but it has far deeper ramifications. Pirating is one thing, reasonable sharing is something completely different!
The big problem that is going to surface before long is that a legal precedence is going to be set in favour of the media giants, who will then be able to legally intimidate equipment manufacturers to build licensing mechanisms into all media handling software and hardware that will erode our basic freedoms to share cultural artefacts.
Once that takes hold it will pervade all manner of information sharing, so we will all end up beholden to a few international mega corps for anything we want to share. Everyone will then loose out, not just the small percent of the population who go overboard in sharing.
5. anonymous
Dear Dr John, tape is relatively low quality and each generation of copy is of a poorer quality that the last - digital copies can be identical to the original, with no quality loss, no matter how many times it is copied.
6. anonymous
I'm no expert on Copyright law but ...
Copyright exists on all sorts of media (tape , records , newspapers , paintings , prints , books , photographs etc.) Copyright terms may allow reproduction for personal use , or may forbid it ... although in practice it is rarely enforced. Otherwise there would be no market for Cassette Recorders , VCRs , photocopiers , DVD burners etc.
The fundamental difference with these offences is one of scale. The scale of the offence is too great for it to be ignored.
It's not so much the copying as the distribution that's the problem.
7. Guy Ward
The over inflated price of a CD does not help matters.We all know how much it costs to produce a cd & its peanuts.The differance in cost between countries,lets say USA & the UK for example is quite large.why? How come I have to pay more for my CD in the UK than the USA.I know the music industries has lots of overheads.But when a UK group produces A CD in the UK but sells it cheaper in the USA than the UK thats annoying.So why pirate? There are other issues that have been mentioned like people naturally share music,stories,etc.& I could debate for hours on this but do not have time.
8. Steph Young
the quality of the medium has nothing to do with it - I am old enough to remember the 80's campaign "HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC" what a joke in 2004 there were a record number of music cd's sold - it is as ever the greedy music industry thinking they must be missing out somehow
9. anonymous
Well.,
Lets see how deep the rabbit hole goes...
As of now they have caught only ~90 or so ... they will take centuries to hunt down the million users !!!
All i can is., It is waste of Time.
;-)