The American recording industry yesterday threatened to take legal action against individuals for illegal file sharing of music, opening a new front in the war against online piracy.
The threat will send a chilling message that the industry is no longer content with chasing file-sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa. The first suits could take place as early as mid-August.
The move underlines how desperate the music industry has become to staunch the flow of illegal downloads, which are beginning to devastate compact disc sales. In 2000, the 10 top-selling albums in the US sold a total of 60-million copies. In 2001 that dropped to 40-million, and last year it was 34-million.
Revenues for the industry in the US have dropped from $14,6-billion in 1999 to $12,6-billion last year. Although some critics have blamed a dearth of quality new music, the dramatic increase in people downloading music is widely held as the chief cause.
The Recording Industry Association of America issued its warning with support from a large coalition of artists including Peter Gabriel, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliot, the Dixie Chicks and Mary J Blige.
”Thievery is thievery,” said the singer Anastacia. ”If you dig an artist that much, then you should want to help keep that artist alive by purchasing the actual recording.”
The RIAA suits will be confined to the US, but are likely to prompt similar action in Europe. Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s president, said the music industry had been trying to educate the public for years about the effects of illegal downloading and had apparently failed.
”The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear — this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences,” he said.
”Once we begin our evidence-gathering process, any individual computer user who continues to offer music illegally to millions of others will run the very real risk of facing legal action.”
The RIAA will gather evidence by scanning public directories to find people offering music. It then intends to download the copyrighted files for use as evidence and issue subpoenas against internet service providers to find the individuals’ names and addresses.
The RIAA estimates that more than 2,6-billion songs are illegally downloaded every month and some 5m users are online, offering 800m files for copying through peer-to-peer networks, at any one time. – Guardian Unlimited Â