Polish Music Industry Continues File Sharing Crackdown

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

24 April 2007

The Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry (ZPAV) is continuing with legal actions against major file-sharers in P2P (peer to peer) services on behalf of the country's music industry, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry announced last week.

Between October 2006 and March 2007, ZPAV submitted crime notifications against 267 uploaders, who made available a total of over 778,000 illegal music files, IFPI revealed.

The Polish music industry joined the IFPI in an international campaign against illegal P2P file-sharing in October 2006. The campaign aims to deter the illegal distribution of copyrighted music and help promote legitimate use of music on the internet.

Since the beginning of the campaign over 20 countries have joined up, and over 36,000 legal actions have been taken (outside the United States).

At the same time ZPAV is stepping up its educational activities on internet music among children, young people and adults.

Illegal file-sharing is causing huge damage to the music industry in Poland according to research commissioned by ZPAV in July 2006, which showed that every week over 5 million tracks are downloaded from P2P networks.

Under Polish law, illegally making files available on the internet constitutes dissemination according to article 116 of the law on copyright and neighbouring rights, and is subject to a penalty of up to 5 years imprisonment.

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