LONDON — The British music industry has joined the United States in the war against the cyberspace banditry and bootlegging of songs, much of it by teenagers, that it says are threatening the livelihood of thousands of musicians around the world.
The practice is known as file-sharing, and it involves “pirates” using computers and the Internet to give away music from internationally renowned pop stars such as Beyonce, Robbie Williams and Eminem.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has started a court hunt for 28 “major file-sharers,” who are illegally making copyright music available for free to millions of music fans around the globe on “peer-to-peer” networks.
In essence, the culprits are “uploaders,” creating a library of material that can be downloaded by anyone with a computer, Internet access and the appropriate software. The cost to the music industry around the world is estimated in the millions of dollars.
“We have resisted legal action as long as we could,” says BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson. “We have been warning for months that unauthorized file-sharing is illegal.
“These are not people casually downloading the odd track,” he said. “They are uploading on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them.”
“This industry is great for some, like me, who can afford a Gucci jacket,” said millionaire British music entrepreneur Pete Waterman, “but 93 percent in our trade are lucky to be earning [about $18,000] a year.”
The BPI says it intends to seek damages and injunctions, targeting the hard-core 15 percent that it says are responsible for most of the illegal file-sharing on the Internet.
After months of exasperating, and mostly fruitless, efforts to curb the practice by sending out 350,000 warning messages to uploaders’ computers, the British have decided, like their American counterparts, to get tough and use the courts.
BPI general counsel Geoff Taylor said about 7.4 million people in Britain admit to downloading songs illegally — a major factor in the decline of sales of singles by 50 percent since 1999. About a third of illegal downloads are by teenagers trying to avoid paying for compact discs in stores.
British music leaders shudder over the statistics from the United States, where music sales have declined from $14.3 billion in 2000 to $11.8 billion in 2003 and some experts think file-sharing was a major contributing factor.
Britain and the United States are not alone in the fight against online music swapping. Scores of similar lawsuits have been started in Europe, including 300 in Denmark, 168 in Germany, 100 in Austria and 50 in France.
The BPI promises that none of the 28 pirates who it is trying to track down will go to jail. “We don’t want to make criminals out of them,” Mr. Taylor said — but BPI intends to hurt them in the checkbook.
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