p2pnet.net News:- Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, have instructed their IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) to significantly increase the number of attacks on their customers in Germany in 2007.

“IFPI Germany CEO Peter Zombik told reporters that his association has sued 20,000 file sharing users since early 2004. Next year the plan to sue 1,000 P2P users per month,” says P2P Blog, going on:

“The German music industry has been very aggressive in pursuing P2P users. Criminal lawsuits are used as a tool to reveal the identity of suscpected file sharers. Once the industry knows their names, file sharers get slapped by an additional civil suit, which usually ends with an out of court settlement. The average settlement amount is 3000 Euro (about 4000 US dollars).”

But, “The mass persecution doesn’t seem to have any lasting impact on the popularity of file sharing in Germany,” says the story, adding:

“Traffic management company Ipoque estimates that at nighttime 70 percent of overall internet traffic is caused by P2P applications. About 53 percent of that traffic is caused by Bittorrent. Emule, which has been traditionally strong in Germany, accounts for 43 percent.”

The “mass persecution” isn’t making any kind of difference anywhere else, either, statements to the contrary from Big Music mouthieces notwithstanding.

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If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Also See:
P2P Blog – German music industry wants to sue 1000 P2P users per month, December 27, 2006
any kind of difference – P2p file sharing escalates, July 3, 2006

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