The record industry today claimed that its strong-arm approach to illegal filesharing is paying off, with online piracy down by 25% in the past year after court action against more than 200 individuals across Europe.
The International Federation of Phonographic Industries, the trade body that represents record labels around the world, started legal action on this side of the Atlantic earlier this year following earlier high profile attempts in America to prosecute users of filesharing services such as Kazaa.
Record labels have blamed a calamitous collapse in global sales over the past three years on a rise in internet piracy, as well as an increase in physical CD copying.
But today the IFPI claimed that the corner was being turned through a combination of legal action and increased awareness of the law - as well as the availability of legal alternatives such as the newly-relaunched Napster and the sites operated by OD2, the digital music company co-founded by Peter Gabriel.
It revealed that legal cases had been concluded in Germany and Denmark, with 17 Danish filesharers agreeing to pay compensation to record companies averaging several thousand euros. A further 23 are negotiating levels of compensation and cases against 24 more are pending.
In Germany, a 23-year-old with 6,000 illegal MP3 files on his computer has agreed to pay 8,000 euros in compensation and further action is planned. Thirty individuals in Italy have also been charged.
The IFPI has been keen to avoid a repeat of the negative publicity in the US, when the heavy-handed approach of the Recording Industry Association of America resulted in the prosecution of a 12-year-old girl.
No legal action has yet been taken against filesharers in the UK, but British Phonographic Industry chairman Peter Jamieson said in March that it would have "no choice" but to follow the lead of the US and other European countries.
A survey released today by the IFPI showed that awareness that filesharing was illegal had risen to seven in 10 in the UK and across Europe. It also showed that half of all those questioned in the UK supported legal action against filesharers, compared to 27% against.
"This survey shows that our message is getting through. Unauthorised filesharing is illegal. People using so-called filesharing networks need to understand that if they do not stop they face legal action," said Mr Jamieson.
Peer to peer filesharing networks such as Kazaa allow computer users to swap tracks with one another in the equivalent of a huge global library.
Because the files are scattered between millions of computers worldwide they are hard to track without the assistance of internet service providers, which up to now have been loathe to implicate themselves by getting involved.
But Mr Jamieson said that the BPI's actions to date, including sending 175,000 instant messages to UK users of Kazaa warning them that their activity was illegal, was starting to pay off.
"Nobody tempted to use these networks should claim ignorance of the law. Unauthorised filesharing is illegal. British music fans now have compelling legal alternatives to stealing. Sales of legal downloads this year hit 500,000 last week, and I expect 2004 to be a breakthrough year for legitimate music services," he said.
Further impetus is likely to be given to the growing popularity of legal downloads with next week's European launch of Apple's iTunes online music store, which will give owners of its iPod music player access to a library of hundreds of thousands of tracks for a predicted 89p each.
But despite the optimism of the record industry, some claim that its surveys are skewed. Recent research from the US suggested that filesharing was actually helping increase sales, while a recent survey among NME readers also claimed that those who downloaded tracks were likely to buy more CDs.
Advocates of downloading claim that the decline in record sales can be put down to other factors such as the disposable nature of the singles chart, a lack of vision and flexibility from record companies and competition from other sectors such as mobile phones, computer games and DVDs.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 7239 9857
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
