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London (pte033/20.04.2005/12:45) - The music industry's trade body has announced that British record labels lost the equivalent of 650 million pounds to illegal computer downloads over the last two years. As the Media Guardian http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk reports, the British Phonographic Industry said that record labels lost 376 million pounds last year - up nearly 100 million pounds on the 278 million pounds that they lost the year before - in the music business' first attempt to quantify the financial cost of illegal downloads. The two-year study by research group TNS http://www.tns-global.com has showed that music fans would have spent 1.5 billion pounds on recorded music between 2002 and 2004, but because of downloads spent only 858 million pounds, according to the BPI.
The figures were revealed as the association announced that a high court judge had granted an order requiring five internet service companies to hand over the names of a further 33 file sharers in the UK, accused of illegally distributing more than 72,000 tracks. This new legal challenge comes after the BPI took action against 31 file sharers last month, fining at least 10 parents of illegal downloaders, the director of an IT company and other unnamed individuals up to 4,500 pounds each. According to record labels, they are continuing with legal action despite the unprecedented success of legal download services such as iTunes, Napster and Wippit.
Figures released yesterday show that legal download sales in the UK rocketed to 5.2 million in the first four-and-a-half months of this year, more than the total recorded for the whole of last year. "Illegal file sharing has claimed hundreds of millions of pounds in lost revenue, much of which would have been invested in new British music," said the BPI chairman, Peter Jamieson. "Although the legal downloads business is growing at an impressive rate, it does not even begin to offset the damage done by illegal file sharing."
The BPI refused to name the five internet companies named in the high court action, but said it would do so in the unlikely event they did not comply with the order. According to a spokesman, it was likely that parents would feature on the list. "The last actions involved people the length and breadth of the country, including parents, and the latest actions are likely to involve similar groups," he said. "It's important to get the message across to parents that they should monitor what their children are doing. The latest batch of lawsuits is likely to result in similar or higher fines than those agreed last month, when 23 out of 26 file sharers agreed to pay an average of 2,200 pounds each in fines.
Geoff Taylor, the BPI's general counsel, warned people who illegally download music tracks that the music industry body would continue to hunt down those who infringed copyright. "We are continuing to collect evidence every day against people who are still uploading music illegally, despite all the warnings we have given," he said. "If you want to avoid the risk of court action, stop file sharing and buy music legally."
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