Pirates beware

This is the first time that a Polish organization has taken part in a campaign directed at individuals distributing significant numbers of music files in peer-to-peer (P2P) services. According to ZPAV, since the beginning of October charges against 59 internet users were submitted to the court.

"Anyone who offers music files in P2P services could expect to be taken to court," ZPAV's anti-piracy coordinator, Jan Bałdyga, said. Alongside punishing distributors and those downloading files illegally, ZPAV is also running educational campaigns in schools and directed at parents.

P2P services, such as Gnutella, Edonkey and Direct Connect, allow users to download music for free, while at the same time making the downloaded music available for others. ZPAV estimates that 74.2 percent of those downloading music from the internet use P2P services and the number of files exchanged in a week could exceed nine million. As Bałdyga said, ZPAV is currently analyzing the legal aspects of filing charges against P2P providers.

To date, the global campaign has resulted in charges against 18,000 people in the US and 13,000 in the rest of the world. In Europe many cases ended with a settlement, with the accused pirates paying an average compensation of EUR 2,300 (zł.8,950) each.

Bałdyga is convinced that the fines and education campaign will have a positive effect. "The case of Germany shows that illegal downloading can be seriously limited," he claims. He points out that there are legal services offering music downloads for individual tracks at a cost of between zł.1 and zł.4 per song.