From the first wave, 17 men and six women aged between 22 and 58 have signed High Court undertakings admitting they illegally shared files and promising not to do it again, the BPI said. "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from.", said Geoff Taylor, BPI general counsel. "These settlements show we can and we will enforce the law," the BPI said.
The BPI has admitted that many of their targeted "pirates" are most likely in fact children and some of the adults settling were settling on behalf of their children. "Some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to," the organisation said. The payments made to the BPI will go back to the copyright holders (typically major labels). The BPI claims also that the lawsuits are not about the compensation, just about the deterrent, adding that they believe illegal trading on the Kazaa (FastTrack) network has fallen by 45% due to the global crackdown.
However, while Kazaa users seem to be falling in numbers, other networks like the eDonkey2000 network are flourishing, and it appears overall P2P usage is on the rise. Also you cannot ignore how low quality Kazaa has become and the fact that most of the P2P community despised it even before the lawsuits. Some music fans are also gone back to a legal way to obtain music, in the form of DRM-protected digital audio files. These come from online stores like iTunes and Napster. iTunes reported recently hitting another milestone of 300 million downloads, showing Apple's dominance of the legal download market.
Source:
BBC News
Written by: James Delahunty @ 4 Mar 2005 9:12
