Music swapping lawsuits go global

31-03-2004

by Martin Lynch

On-line music sharing has come under further attack as record labels in Europe and Canada joined the US music industry in launching a barrage of lawsuits.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and associated recording associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada have taken action against 247 alleged illegal file-sharers. The move mirrors similar successful actions taken by the US music industry against people that were found to be downloading or sharing music illegally. This raft of lawsuits is expected to be followed by many more in other countries in the coming months.

"Today we are announcing a wave of legal actions against illegal file-sharing in several countries," said Jay Berman, chairman and CEO of the IFPI. "We are targeting individuals whom we believe are illegally making available hundreds or thousands of song files containing our members' copyrighted music. This is the start of an international campaign against on-line copyright theft."

Berman admitted that education, while increasing awareness of the problem, has failed to stop the rise in illegal music sharing. "We have learned that education alone is not sufficient, and that some people persist because, like shop-lifters, they think they can 'get away with it.' So we have decided that only the prospect of legal action is going to make those people rethink what they are doing."

IFPI claimed that illegal sharing of music on-line has contributed to the loss of almost EUR5 billion of annual record sales over the last five years.

The actions of IFBI fly in the face of research that claimed downloading music from the Internet has no impact on CD sales. Carried out by Harvard Business School, the research involved monitoring two massive file-swapping servers for 17 weeks. In that period 1.75 million files were downloaded and then compared with the sales of 680 popular CDs. Despite an increase in the downloads of particular tracks from an album, when compared to sales of that album, the results were "statistically indistinguishable from zero."

"'The Internet is really much more like radio than we thought," said report co-author Felix Oberholzer-Gee. "'If they like what they hear, they go to the store, and they buy it."

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was quick to hit out. Jonathan Lamy, spokesman for the group, rejected the conclusions of the new report and that "the overwhelming weight of evidence, analysis, and surveys attest that illegal file sharing has a negative impact on CD sales."