First legal blitz launched against UK music sharers

The UK music industry is launching a broadside at file-sharers in the UK for the first time: music industry trade body the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has announced ut is suing 28 people thought to be responsible for uploading music illegally.

The BPI is after damages from the 28 and is seeking injunctions to stop them being able to upload tunes to file-sharing networks. The BPI claim the file-sharers were "major uploaders" and posted tunes to a variety of peer-to-peer sites including Kazaa, Grokster and WinMX.

The association took the action after warning a number of file-sharers over IM that they faced legal action if they continued to upload songs illegally – in total, over 350,000 of the messages were sent out.

After the messaging campaign and a final warning in March, when the BPI revealed the action was in the pipeline, the association says it has been forced to take the matter to the courts.

A BPI spokesman said the body had targeted the "illegal dealers" who were making "piracy possible on a large scale". He added that the BPI has targeted uploaders rather than downloaders to "cut the problem off at its source."

One file-sharer told silicon.com: "It's a matter of risk. There are millions of us out there, if they pick off a few what are the chances of getting caught? I think they're trying to scare people, which is why they're only going for a handful of cases to start with. I'm not scared."

Although the BPI is hoping the legal action will deter music piracy, it says the number of illegal files being uploaded to the internet is already dropping.

It's thought that the recent boom in legal music download services, including iTunes, Napster and Karmadownload, is the key reason behind that. Apple's iTunes alone has sold over 125 million songs in the UK, France and Germany since its launch earlier this year and the UK download industry now has its very own download chart.

Several major bands have come out in favour of illegal file-sharing, including best-selling Mercury Music Prize winners Franz Ferdinand.

The group's singer Alex Kapranos recently told Rolling Stone: "Downloading is a great way to find out about music. I'm not going to criticise somebody for loving music. People come up to me and say, 'I downloaded your album, and I can't wait to go out and buy it'."

The BPI spokesman said: "You've got to respect an artist's views... but the reason they're able to produce brilliant music is because a record company believed in them and backed them."

The BPI's litigation comes as part of a Europe-wide move by record industry associations across the continent, with 459 legal actions being taken.

The BPI's US equivalent, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has sued over a thousand people - most famously a 12-year old girl.

The RIAA has suffered a backlash from music fans after the assoication brought suits against 5,000 sile sharers, prompting a denial-of-service attack on the association's website.

The BPI spokesman said: "We don't want to be unpopular... but we're not in it to win a popularity contest, we're in it to send out a message [that file-sharing is wrong]," he said.

In other news, a Lanarkshire man has been sent to jail for nine months for producing counterfeit Adobe and Microsoft software.