Digital Rights Network

At a conference in the Netherlands on 12 April, attended by the CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries John Kennedy it was announced that for the first time individual users of peer-to-peer networks would be targeted in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands.

Meanwhile a judge in the UK ordered ISPs to hand over the names of a further 31 file-sharers in the second round of lawsuits brought by the BPI.

Concurrently, the BPI released figures in which it claimed that downloading had cost the industry 650 million pounds over the last two years, but it is unclear whether the statistics separate legal and illegal downloading, and whether they control for a decline in sales caused by a lack of fresh talent (the video game and film industries have not suffered similar delines despite their products being open to file-sharing - see
P2P's Impact on Recorded Music Sales by Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf for more detail on how these figures can mislead).

The basis for suing individual users is the legal right to force ISPs to disclose the identities of their clients, a contentious practice that was at the centre of a WIPO conference on ISP liability on 18th April. Read an informative summary of proceedings with links to further material.