Article Summary: 'Record labels turn up heat on illegal downloaders' By Dominic Timms

The key points of this article (published on Friday 4th March 2005, Media Guardian) are:

• UK record labels have forced 23 internet users to pay fines worth a total of more than £50,000 after they admitted to illegally downloading music.
• The British Phonographic Industry said it was bringing 31 new actions against other "illegal" filesharers as it accelerated a campaign to clamp down on copyright infringements.
• The BPI refused to confirm that children were among those fined, but admitted that some of the downloaders were parents and said it was "highly likely that they settled on behalf of their children".
• They descirbe the downloads as 'online theft'.
• The BPI said the 23 users had downloaded between a few hundred to "many thousands" of tracks with two of the heaviest downloaders each agreeing to pay more than £4,000.
• The BPI said it would go to the high court today in a bid to unearth the identities of 31 other individuals and widen its search to other sites.
• The move comes less than a month before users of the most popular peer-to-peer networks - so called because they route music and other downloads between individual computers rather than relying on a central server - plan a week of direct action urging people not to buy any CDs.
• Most releases are 'format' productions where talent, passion and creativity come after profits and greed," says a message on the organisers' website. "Most of us feel that they should look into wider availability and more affordable pricing instead of claiming higher moral ground as an excuse to prop up an outdated and failing business model."