Today, the recording industry in Hong Kong, as represented by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (Hong Kong Group), (IFPI Hong Kong Group) announced that it will escalate its actions in curbing illegal peer-to-peer music file sharing by sending directly to infringers the following instant message:
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WARNING: Offering copyrighted music from your computer is an act of Copyright Infringement. When you offer copyrighted music to others from your computer, you are not anonymous. Whatever purported justification you may perceive, your act will not only attract legal liability, but will definitely impair and will eventually destroy music in Hong Kong. Please do not share any music on-line illegally.
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Prior to the popularity of the Peer-to-Peer (p2p) services available on-line, the IFPI Hong Kong Group sent out Cease and Desist Notice to portal sites on the Internet through the co-operation with the ISPs which have offered voluntary measures to fight against on-line piracy. The initial response was encouraging where some 80% of those sites ceased to operate. When Napster introduced the p2p file sharing service during the year of 2000, the whole landscape of music business has changed as the subscribers /users have now, with the aid of the p2p service, been in control and have taken an active role in the sharing of illegal music file on-line. IFPI (Hong Kong Group) has closely followed the international practice by educating the public and by running positive publicity (such as by a campaign entitled “Give Life to Music”) in order to fight against music on-line piracy. The message is clear and simple which asks music fans to respect music copyright by refusing to download and to share illegal files. The Internet has been widely used by music lovers in seeking and obtaining copies of music illegally for years and the Hong Kong recording industry has been suffering from huge losses in music sales annually. Hong Kong is not alone as the information superhighway has no boundary. The global music industry has also suffered huge losses in business and facing with the rampant on-line piracy, it has been forced to take the long and hard legal battles against the p2p files sharing services with the judicial rulings in its favour such as the original Napster (2001 in the U.S.), Grokster (2005 in the U.S.), Kazza (2005 in Australia) and just as of last week, Kuro in Taiwan. In each and every case, the court finds these services are liable for copyright infringement. Early in the year 2005, the local movie industry also felt the great losses and the impact of illegal movie sharing on the Internet brought by new and powerful Bit Torrent software. They were forced to initiate high profile publicity against illegal file sharing on film works. The arrest of the first BT uploader in Hong Kong made international news. IFPI Hong Kong Group noticed a sharp drop of Hong Kong Internet volume in traffic from an average 15Gbits/sec second before the news to 11Gbits/sec for days immediately after the arrest. It has also looked into the p2p user profile. From a special study covering the period from March to August this year, IFPI Hong Kong Group has ascertained more that 15,000 cases of p2p file sharing of local pre-release music titles in Hong Kong. IFPI Hong Kong Group once again urges the music user community to respect the creativity of producers and artistes by stopping illegal download, in particular at the time when legal music downloading service has now been widely available in Hong Kong. By bringing the direct Instant Message to the illegal file sharing users, the users are reminded that they may not be as anonymous after all and their activities will attract legal liability.
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| IFPI (HKG) Ltd 14th September, 2005 |
