UK record companies' trade association the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has announced it is taking legal action against another 33 illegal file sharers in the UK, bringing to 90 the number of people in the UK that have faced legal action since its campaign against Internet file sharing began last year.
The announcement coincides with the recent announcement by the BPI's international counterpart the IFPI of action against 963 illegal file sharers in 11 countries.
The UK recording industry first announced legal action against 26 illegal file sharers in October 2004. Those cases have all now been settled, with defendants paying more than $95,000 in compensation.
The BPI further announced on March 4 that it intended pursuing proceedings against 31 more illegal file sharers. Following disclosure of their identities by ISPs, these 31 are being written to today with details of the BPI's legal claims against them.
In addition, the BPI today says it intends proceeding against another 33 illegal file sharers and will be going to the High Court next week to seek disclosure of their identities.
BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said,
"We have warned people time and again that unauthorised file sharing is against the law. Anyone who is engaged in this activity faces having to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. It's now easy to get music online legally. We will maintain our campaign until the message gets across."
The 33 new cases include users of the KaZaA, DirectConnect, BearShare, SoulSeek, Grokster and BitTorrent peer-to-peer networks.
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