BPI To Take action against Music Uploaders

[crankykick]

Source

Music fans who download their favourite tracks on the internet for free are facing the threat of legal action.

The music industry says illegal file-sharing websites have hit their profits hard and they have no choice.The record business says it has experienced a 22% drop in sales worldwide, and a 50% dive in the sale of UK singles.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is to pursue legal action against people who make their music collection available on the internet, illegally, for other web users to share.

It wants to target a hardcore 15% responsible for 75% of all illegal file-sharing on the internet.

Lawyers for the phonographic industry say there is no excuse for downloading tracks illegally - as more than two-and-a-quarter-million have been bought legally on quality music sites set up by Napster and Apple.

The move, targeting sites like Grokster and Kazaa, comes after court action in the US resulted in a recovery in the record industry there.

Last year, a 12-year-old schoolgirl from New York paid £13,000 as an out-of-court settlement. She had been one of 261 Americans sued for downloading songs.

The BPI announced in March that it planned to take action and has since sent hundreds of thousands of instant internet messages to people, warning file-sharers they were being watched.

But the messages have not deterred the most prolific offenders, the BPI says.

[Scoobs]

the register

The UK record industry is suing 28 people in an attempt to stop them sharing music files over the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says the legal action is aimed at “major filesharers” and “large-scale uploaders”. More cases are expected to follow. The BPI will seek damages and injunctions to stop people uploading tracks onto file-sharing networks.

Peter Jamieson, chairman of the BPI, said: “We have been warning for months that unauthorized file-sharing is illegal. These are not people casually downloading the odd track. They are uploading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them.”

The BPI has run a hearts and minds campaign for some time. In March it gave a final warning that if things did not improve it would consider legal action. Since then it has sent 350,000 instant messages to uploaders warning them of possible legal action.

The cases form part of action being taken against 459 file sharers in six European countries by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Legal action will be a mixture of criminal and civil cases. ®

Talk about one sided more people in usa have cable yet only 261 so far have been sued yet 28 in the uk are being sued,

After the easy target they should try stopping all the markets and carboots that sell pirate stuff guess this way is easy for them as its all paper work and dont have to send staff out to markets.

[crankykick]

Talk about one sided more people in usa have cable yet only 261 so far have been sued yet 28 in the uk are being sued

Originally Posted by Scoobs

I think a lot of cases didn't get to court in the US as they paid up before it reached that stage.

[Scoobs]

I think a lot of cases didn't get to court in the US as they paid up before it reached that stage.

Originally Posted by crankykick

Still sued still a small amount seeing as theres far more on the net there than here

[merlin]

Got to agree with scoobs on that one, America I would imagine far outnumbers the amount of UK downloaders. What makes me laugh is the the excuse they are giving . The so called legal sites, that charge you up to 89p per download. . I wanted an old back loged album, to download all 20 tracks that would have cost me £17.80. Had I bought it at the time it was relaeased I would have paid no more than £12. I ended up buying it a boot sale for £2.00.

Who is fooling who Ok if you just want the one track then that works out as a bargain, of course providing you can get it on those sites. I am not intersted in the new music, most of my downloads are from the 60's and 70's, the legal sites as far as I can see do not have what I look for.

[Alnath]

I ended up buying it a boot sale for £2.00.

Originally Posted by merlin

Which is technically illegal (if it was an original), the copyright holder did not give permission to resell the recording and did not receive a royalty from the sale.

Cake and eat it comes to mind with the record business sometimes.