Industry groups beef up crusade against file-sharing

Europe's recording industry will escalate its campaign against illegal music file-sharers worldwide, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said.

In a statement, the industry group said the latest actions come with a new warning to parents to check what their children are doing online, as they could face financial penalties if their children access illegal material.

The IFPI and its affiliate national bodies have announced nearly 2,000 new legal cases against individuals uploading large amounts of copyrighted music and are extending actions to Portugal, where the legal market has been adversely affected by illegal file-sharing.

Hundreds of people have already paid the price for illegally file-sharing copyrighted material, the group said.

In a development that could be mirrored in other EU countries, thousands of file-sharers in Denmark could now find their online connections cut off by their ISPs.

The ruling follows more than 130 injunctions that have been taken out in France that led to file-sharers being disconnected by their ISPs.

In Italy, a series of raids against individual file-sharers and servers in the past two weeks has led to the seizure of more than 70 computers in the search for evidence.

This latest wave of cases, covering actions launched today or brought in recent months, takes the total number of legal actions against uploaders to more than 5,500 in 18 countries outside the US.