File Sharing Community: Illegal file-sharing threatened in Europe - File Sharing Community

After a short time of calm, pursuing and punishing of “the dangerous criminals” who illegally download copyrighted multimedia files is back in the attention of organizations like BPI (British Phonographic Industry). This organization will make miserable the life of 33 persons charged with providing hundreds of songs through the P2P networks.

With this new “capture”, BPI’s performance amounts to 90 cases of digital music piracy. Among these, 23 have already paid fines of 2,000 pounds each.

Despite the efforts of authorities, the phenomenon of file sharing goes on. “Although a great number of users has understood the importance of using legal services for obtaining digital format music, too many Internet surfers ignore these measures and continue to illegally share multimedia content”, said an BPI spokesman.

The international organization IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) made a statement simultaneously with BPI, declaring that it will initiate a much more consistent action against file-sharing adepts by charging 963 persons with illegally providing or obtaining music files. These pirates that have to be stopped at any cost are not pursued only in Great Britain and United States, but also in another 11 countries. Finland, Iceland, Ireland and Holland are also initiating actions against Internet surfers who illegally download music.

Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain are continuing their actions against P2P users. Until now, in Europe, 248 users have had trouble with the law and were fined with 3,000 pounds. The Japanese have not remained indifferent to this phenomenon and are also launching actions against pirating users.

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So let me get this straight... This is what has been going on in the U.S. Now, its happening everywhere?

skaterguy452288, on Apr 13 2005, 03:46 PM, said:

Yep.

Its hard to tell who the bad guys really are in all of this. Some people could say its the people who pirate alot, and some could say its the RIAA. It depends on each person and it seems as if the RIAA just has a bunch of people who wanna be rich. The piracy community just wants to get things for free. Whats worse? lol

--in the end, the RIAA always ends up 'looking' like the bad guys.

Pirating ain't bad if you weren't going to buy the stupid cd anyways. If anything, when I get older and have a career and the money that comes with it, maybe Ill buy cds of bands I would have never even heard of if it wasn't for downloading the song for free. In this sense, for me, it does the bands a lot of good to let me download their songs. I also talk about bands that I've dled. This helps to get the word out.

please stop spreading incorrect information:

Mavol, on Apr 13 2005, 01:31 PM, said:

downloading isn't illegal (at least not for movies in any form and music and in most of europe, which is what we are talking about here)

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this quote which is an actual quote is correct. sharing is illegal in most of europe. (not sure about sweden)

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more specifically in Holland, the Brain Institute or however it is to be translated into an english name, anyway it is a sort if MPAA/RIAA, stated themselves, that downloading is NOT illegal, and even explain how to download legally with applications as Kazaa on their own site.

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France in fact has ruled IN COURT that downloading is legal, which is quite rare for a p2p-case to go to court, all you ever read is people who settle, thus not generating a precedent. But now at least in France there is, with European Law coming closer....

ETA this is exactly why so many people settle and not fight back, because everywhere on the internet, even in filesharing forums, people write about "illegal downloading" which makes people think they are doing something illegal and decide to settle. What is against privacy laws, is for ISP to give your name/adress, to anyone other than court who asks for it. As stated above , these things hardly ever find their way to court, still plenty of names/adresses are "found?"

This post has been edited by irduif: 15 April 2005 - 12:33 AM

Your first post and I already like you


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