AfterDawn: News

459 European P2P users sued

Music industry has taken its first major steps within Europe to clamp down the illegal music sharing over the P2P networks and 459 individuals have been sued across six European countries in raids today. Officials targeted British, Austrian, German, Italian, Danish and French P2P users. Music industry claims that they didn't target against casual downloaders, but instead the users who share (as opposed to download) major amounts of music across P2P networks. Users of Kazaa, eDonkey/eMule and Gnutella were amongst the users raided today.

The attack against individuals users comes after months of warnings from music industry's international organization, IFPI and its local counterparts, such as British BPI. "We are taking this action as a last resort and we are doing it after a very long public awareness campaign," said IFPI chairman Jay Berman. IFPI also stated that according to their statistics, 15 percent of P2P users are responsible of sharing over 75 percent of files available in P2P networks.



Danish P2P users were hit hardest this time -- 174 Danish P2P users were sued today. In Germany and Austria, 100 P2P users were sued in both countries.

Source: Reuters

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 7 Oct 2004 15:29

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• 9 comments

• loginasme

  The technology exists, its not a matter of winning anymore, all they can hope to achieve is slowing people down.

  8.10.2004 00:14 #1

• domie

  Well if the technology exists or not isn´t really that important in this case, is it ? If enough people are sued for thousands of dollars, pounds or euros, i would say that is a pretty effective means of limiting the network. For every poor victim who is singled out for their bully-boy treatment another 100 will run away scared.

  8.10.2004 00:27 #2

• amirza

  For the 100 that run away scared ther will be 1000 to replace them

  8.10.2004 03:22 #3

• SiD_UK

  The american RIAA legal actions haven't slowed the US population from downloading music ... why should it affect the european population?
  
  People always want things for free.
  
  It was the same in the 80's with tapes and video's and it's the same with dvd's and cd's today. Just you can reproduce them much better than the old Video copys and tape reproduction :P
  
  Piracy has and always will exsist be it Electronic or otherwise.

  8.10.2004 06:32 #4

• bridq

  well said sid_UK; I agree with you completely.

  8.10.2004 08:19 #5

• Toiletman

  RIAA and other protection companies need to use P2P networks to their benefit, not go against them. Evolve and adapt. Change is one of the things people don't accept...

  8.10.2004 09:03 #6

• psx245

  man im kinda scared of get sued!!! thats why we shall fight for our rights!!

  8.10.2004 12:59 #7

• mikeyk

  Its just crazy how mad they get for losing a little money. They already are flaming rich. But they ruin the lives of everyone they sue!!

  15.10.2004 08:57 #8

• mikeyk

  Its just crazy how mad they get for losing a little money. They already are flaming rich. But they ruin the lives of everyone they sue!!

  15.10.2004 08:58 #9