Petteri Pyyny
14 Jan 2004 15:16
Director of "British RIAA", the BPI (The British Phonographic Industry), warned British P2P users that it will start suing them if they keep on sharing their music via P2P networks.
"We want to increase consumer awareness of the legal implications of file-sharing. We want to introduce new legitimate (online download) services. If these are not working, then there has to be a degree of enforcement," said Andrew Yeates, director general of BPI.
He also said that BPI would follow the RIAA's lead and go after the users who share larger amounts of music online. Yeates also hinted that BPI -- and other European copyright organizations -- might wait until the legal music services, such as Apple's iTunes are available in Europe, before launching any larger scale legal attack against individual P2P users.
In most of the European countries, it is legal to download music from P2P networks, but not to distribute it (or as it states in various countries "to allow public to access the copyrighted works without permission from copyright owners") or share it via P2P networks.
Source: Reuters via Yahoo!