News from the Music Industry

Speaking at a panel at the Digital Hollywood Europe show in London, Paul Jessop, the chief technology officer for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said that, to date, the agency has not filed any suits against music downloaders. Representatives of the U.K. film industry also acknowledged that they also would likely not take action against customers who “camcord”, or record movies playing in a U.K. movie theater with a video camcorder.

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According to Jessop, users who upload a file to a server risk the legal ire of the IFPI, but those that pick and choose individual files for download via a Web browser are not worth the effort. “Web browser downloading is not of interest to us,” Jessop told a panel audience.

Jessop said that the agency would prosecute consumers that uploaded songs to the Internet, however, including peer-to-peer file sharing. Applications such as Kazaa, BitTorrent, and others usually require users to share whole files or pieces of files, distributing the bandwidth load among different computers. The agency also has a different division dedicated to stamping out large-scale CD duplication efforts.

While Hollywood and the U.S. aggressively moves to stamp out piracy, Europe has taken a markedly more tolerant view of the rights of consumers. In June, for example, a group of Scandinavian countries led by Norway argued that iTunes should be opened up to allow copies of purchased music to be played on any device, while France has also argued that Apple’s service hurts competition.