The music industry inadvertently sent mixed signals on Wednesday with an international industry association filing more than 2,000 file-sharing lawsuits at the same time that EMI, one of the world’s largest music publishers, posted robust numbers with its own digital sales, growing 142 percent.
The out-of-tune juxtaposition certainly lends credibility to those who say the music industry has been crying wolf and that it has overstated the effect that illegal file-sharing has had on the industry’s bottom line. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an international recording industry organization, said on Wednesday that it had filed 2,100 new lawsuits against individuals in five countries in Europe, Asia, and South America.
The move represents a significant escalation in a war the international music industry has fought almost nonstop for five years. File sharers in Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, Hong Kong, and Singapore face criminal penalties and fines upward of $3,000 for uploading copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks.
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