The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) - the record industry’s global body - said each could face five years in prison.
They may also have to pay compensation for offering up to 8,000 files at a time for download on the eDonkey site.
The investigation led to searches in 130 locations across Germany.
The charges affect people who upload “large amounts” of music to file-sharing networks, not those who solely download tracks to their computers or who use legitimate services such as Apple’s iTunes.
“No-one should be surprised that we are stepping up our campaign in this way,” said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI.
“Internet piracy has hurt the whole music community in Germany, with legitimate sales falling by a third in just five years.”
The organisation claimed more than 400 million music files were downloaded illegally in Germany in 2005 alone.
The German recording industry has brought legal proceedings against more than 7,000 people over the past three years.
Several hundred settlements have resulted in file-sharers paying an average of 2,500 euros (£1,705) in damages.
Correct me if i m wroing, even in foreign countries you dont get arrested unless you are a major uploader like a movie ripper who uploads 20-40 Gb data every day
^^Well technically speaking the softwares themselves arent illegal. Its what the users do with them And why do u want them to ban the softwares anyway( ur also an uploader ;))
perhaps if we cud resitigate web i mean if we cud really make something lik cops on the web who can see wots happening and not dat wud be more sofisticating. :cool2:
I used to be worried waaaay back in 1998 when i downloaded a 4mb mp3. i’m telling ya i was HELL scared if someone would find out.. LOL!!!
Then asked around and none of my friends seems to have been arrested, so i was relieved..
lol who cares, india is far from bneing investigated in such matters and i doubt whether neone will pay attention here looking at the majority of indians having Uber connections (64K,128k,256K …) :lol: those people got 2-4MBps lines or maybe higher connections, i heard tht in america also ISPs get suspicious if a user uploads 10GB in a day (read the stuff somewhere)
Some foreign countries can be made an exception like Germany and France. Just recently E-mule’s top server ’ Razorback 2.0 ’ was raided by cops and was shut down, iirc the server was situated in Germany…
But yeah in developing countries like India, we’re probably the safest.
And p2p developers always made the softwares with the intentions of mp3 sharing in mind, at least Kazaa which set the tone for the wide file-sharing scene we have today, but they chose to call it ‘file sharing’ to pick the safer way out.
