LONDON - The record industry trade group IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) has recently filed 459 lawsuits against users of file sharing networks in Europe. IFPI claims that they have specifically targeted their actions to "uploaders" or users who don't just download music for their own but share large collections of copyrighted music. The lawsuits were filed against Kazaa, eDonkey, and Gnutella users in the UK, France, Austria, Germany, Italy and Denmark.

  "We are taking this action as a last resort and we are doing it after a very long public awareness campaign," says IFPI chairman Jay Berman in a Reuters article. He adds that their own statistics show 15 percent of file sharers are responsible for supplying 75 percent of the illicit files to these networks.

  The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed thousands of similar lawsuits in the US during the past year. RIAA's methods have had little or no effect to the popularity of the file sharing networks, but have caused a large movement against the music industry.

• Reuters article