Ben Reid
17 Oct 2006 14:44
In a worldwide clampdown on internet piracy, the International Federation for the Phonograph Industry (IFPI) has issued a huge wave of lawsuits against peer-to-peer fileswappers. A total of 8,000 individuals in 17 countries are being sued, which includes the first cases to be filed in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.
The trade group, which represents the world's music companies, has said some 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded worldwide last year - 1 billion of those being in Brazil - the largest market in Latin America. The latest crackdown sees the total number of lawsuits soar to 31,000 worldwide, with 18,000 coming from the United States.
Those targeted for litigation were the "uploaders" -- those who put songs on filesharing networks without permission for others to download. File sharing networks targeted include BitTorrent, eDonkey, DirectConnect, Gnutella, Limewire, SoulSeek and WinMX, the IFPI said. Countries involved in the latest round of suits are Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore and Switzerland.
"Around the world many people have already paid a heavy price for their illegal file-sharing. They all thought they were unlikely to be caught, but teachers, postal workers, IT managers, scientists and people in a host of other occupations, as well as parents, have ended up having to dig deeply into their pockets," said IFPI chairman John Kennedy.
In an interview with Reuters, Kennedy also noted that he was encouraged by the progress the IFPI has made, but conceded that the battle against online piracy would be an ongoing battle. "It's not getting easier but we are encouraged enough by the results to keep on going," he said via the telephone from a trip to Brazil. "It will never go away completely."
Sources:
- Reuters
- Betanews