Thursday 7th October 2004
UK record industry starts legal action against 28 file sharers 11:42AM
The BPI has announced that has begun taking legal action against 28 UK file sharers, some of whom, it says, have made thousands of files available for downloading.
It will seek damages and injunctions to prevent them from making files available in the future.
The record labels' chief body said that these 'large-scale uploaders' used the Kazaa, Imesh, Grokster, Bearshare and WinMX networks to make music files available in contravention of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Specifically, section 16, which gives a copyright owner exclusive rights to copy and communicate their work, and section 20, which defines communication as including making work available 'in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.'
Although record labels are largely in favour of the BPI's action, some artists have spoken out against it. Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos said recently that, 'File-sharing is something that has really helped us as a band in getting established. ... For us it has been global word of mouth that has helped our progress, not hindered it.'
The BPI, however, is convinced that downloading has hit sales, and has considerable research to back its case, although sales have begun to recover slightly over the past year. The organisation says that following legal action in the US, where the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has pursued and won settlements against several thousand individuals, the number of files available on p2p networks fell 30 per cent in a year while the number of users has declined by 40 per cent since April 2003.
BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said, 'We have resisted legal action as long as we could. But we would be derelict in our duty were we not to take action to demonstrate that this activity is illegal and harmful to every aspect of the British music industry.'
The BPI's action coincides with similar announcements in France, also for the first time, and Italy, Germany and Denmark, marking the largest single wave outside the US. Some 80 people in Germany and Denmark have made payments totalling €13,000 following the first European action in March.
