and here we go again:
Recording industry goes lawsuit crazy: sues 8000
"In a worldwide clampdown on internet piracy, the International Federation for the Phonograph Industry (IFPI) has issued a huge wave of lawsuits against peer-to-peer fileswappers. A total of 8,000 individuals in 17 countries are being sued, which includes the first cases to be filed in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.
The trade group, which represents the world's music companies, has said some 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded worldwide last year - 1 billion of those being in Brazil - the largest market in Latin America. The latest crackdown sees the total number of lawsuits soar to 31,000 worldwide, with 18,000 coming from the United States."
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/8030.cfm
i think the funniest/saddest thing about this is, maybe instead of using music downloaders as scapegoats for poor sales, maybe they should take a look in their proverbial mirror and stop releasing stinky bands with sucky albums, and maybe bring the prices down like they said they would (but didnt) and... ahhh i could go on and on...
ps i being (old) and old school, have; taped records on to cassette, taped am/fm radio to cassette, cassette to cassette, vhs to vhs etc etc etc for decades now, (all for personal use of course) as have most music fans. i can understand them going after for profit bootleggers, but they dont seem to differenciate... the idea of downloading music is not new, its just different than how people used to do it. they are biting the very hand that feeds them, hence, more poor sales almost guaranteed in the already shakey record label industry... awesome