Technology Vault - NewsBytes

Thursday 7 October, 2004

BPI to sue UK filesharers by turnitonagain @ 12:13 pm

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) have announced today that they are starting a "rolling program of legal action against major filssharers". The crack-down is targetting 28 filesharers in UK, but more are expected to follow. This of course is following on from the well publicised cases in US by the RIAA.

The BPI are looking to impose fines and injunctions on the law-breakers who are uploading (ie making available on P2P networks) copyrighted material. The networks the users are using include: KaZaA, Imesh, Grokster, Bearshare and WinMX.

The final warning to users came in March 2004 and they were warned that if they continued to share illegal material, legal action would be taken. Over 350,000 instant messages were send to uploaders' computers warning them of the consequences if they continue.

BPI chairman Peter Jamieson had this to say: "We have resisted legal action as long as we could. We have done everything we can to raise awareness of this problem. We have encouraged legal services and launched an Official Download Chart.

"But we would be derelict in our duty to protect and promote British music were we not to take action to demonstrate that this activity is illegal and harmful to every aspect of the creative British music industry. We believe we have no alternative other than to enforce our rights through the courts."

The action taken by the BPI is part of a larger announcement by the IFPI, with a total of 459 cases of legal action being brought against filesharers across Europe.

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