14 DAY TRIAL // About 23 UK file-sharers that illegally downloaded music from the Internet for free have agreed to pay a settlement for the piracy.
The deal, considered a first for the industry, involves an average payment of $4,864 for each offender, and almost doubles that amount for one person that pirated 9,000 titles.
Those who accepted the deal to compensate the record industry include 17 men and six women, aged 22 to 58. Three people declined the settlement and will be taken to court.
The RIAA went after US file-sharers in a similar way, forcing heavy penalties on folk using file-sharing networks such as Kazaa Grokster or Imesh to swap songs they shouldn't have on their computers without paying for. These high penalties have the sole purpose to scare away the million internet users who download and swap music and video files protected by copyright. As in the US cases, however, the court cases focused on prolific uploaders rather than downloaders.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said it hopes that people will understand that the best way to avoid the risk of legal action and paying substantial compensation is to stop illegal filesharing and to buy music online from legal sites.
The BPI is due to attend the High Court seeking orders for the disclosure of the identities of a further 31 illegal file sharers on a range of peer-to-peer networks, including Kazaa, eDonkey, Grokster, Soulseek, DirectConnect, Limewire, BearShare and Imesh.
The BPI also quotes figures that the number of eDonkey servers is down by 61 per cent and BitTorrent servers and users are down 66 per cent but fails to the timescale or source for this data.