Pirate Beatles website operator jailed by Brazilian court

The owner of a website in Brazil that sold pirate copies of music from The Beatles has been sentenced to more than 18 months in prison this week. The result is a success for IFPI's Brazilian Anti-Piracy Unit which spent five months investigating the illegal operations of the site. The counterfeit compilations of music from The Beatles were compacted into .mp3 format without authorisation from the copyright holders and sold for an average price of R$15 (approximately US$7). (PR)

Labels Applaud U.K. Govt. Proposal to Have ISPs Police P2P

The U.K. government is expected within coming weeks to propose legislation that would require ISPs to send notices to subscribers using their accounts for illegal file-sharing, and then dole out suspensions or terminations for repeated abuses, Billboard and others reported. "The tide of opinion is flowing in favour of ISP responsibility," said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). (Digital Media Wire)

Music Companies Sue China's Baidu, Sohu

Music companies have started a new fight with China's Internet industry over piracy, filing lawsuits accusing popular Web sites Baidu.com and Sohu.com of aiding illicit online copying, the IFPI said Wednesday. (AP)

IPFI chief says it's time to hose down the networks

In an interview from the music business annual Midem, we speak to John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the IPFI, the international trade group representing record labels. Here he talks about the new ISP strategy, and the future of the big label. (The Register)

EU court supports privacy of music downloaders

Europe's top court dealt a blow to the defenders of authors' rights, upholding a Spanish Internet provider's refusal to reveal the identity of customers sharing music downloads. The protection of authors' rights "cannot ... affect the requirements of the protection of personal data," the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in its ruling. (AFP, Reuters, Billboard)

Music Biz Pushes Piracy Blame To ISPs; Digital Sales Up 40 Percent

Kennedy is hoping to piggyback a new French policy that will force ISPs to monitor customers for illegal file sharing - and disconnect them after three strikes. Global music industry sales declined by around 10% in 2007, he said. Legal global track downloads grew 53 percent in 2007 to 1.7 billion. Individual singles make up 30 percent of the digital music market. Record labels made an estimated $2.9 billion from digital sales in 2007, 40 percent increase ($2.1 billion in 2006, $1.1 billion in 2005, $380 million in 2004). Digital now represents 15 percent of the total music market. (Paid Content, IFPI Digital Music Report, Dow Jones)

IFPI Fails to Force ISPs to Become Anti-Piracy Enforcers

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has been lobbying politicians of the European Parliament to force ISP’s to identify, filter, block and remove copyright infringing content from the Internet. Now, according to an early report, it appears that all three anti-piracy measures have been defeated. (Torrent Freak)

Usenet provider wins against EMI

German Usenet provider United Newsserver has prevailed in a lawsuit initiated by EMI. The record company wanted to force United Nesserver to block access to its music with a preliminary injunction, but a Dusseldorf court now found that the company cannot be held responsible for the misdeeds of its or other Usenet users. This decision reverses a lower court ruling from last May that sided with the music industry and was hailed by the German IFPI as a sign that people "who make illegal content available on the Internet cannot bail out of their resposibilities", as local IFPI boss Peter Zombik put it back then. (P2P Blog)

EMI to exit IFPI

Following the guidelines of the Intl. Federation of the Phonographic Industry, EMI sent a letter the last week of December to IFPI leadership stating that the company would file to leave the org if the structure and aims of the IFPI are not aligned with the interests of EMI. A source close to the negotiations said all four major labels are in talks with IFPI about altering its course. “This is not about cost-cutting,” the source said. “Functions and structure need to make sense to all major labels. Right now, funding them doesn’t make sense. (Variety)