NewCardDude
06-20-2004, 09:02 PM
PARIS Not long ago, a friend recommended to Maria that she check out a new American electronic rock band, the Postal Service.
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
.
As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
.
More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
.
"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
.
The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
.
International Herald Tribune PARIS Not long ago, a friend recommended to Maria that she check out a new American electronic rock band, the Postal Service.
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
.
As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
.
More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
.
"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
.
The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
.
International Herald Tribune PARIS Not long ago, a friend recommended to Maria that she check out a new American electronic rock band, the Postal Service.
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
.
As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
.
More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
.
"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
.
The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
International Herald Tribune
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
.
As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
.
More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
.
"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
.
The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
.
International Herald Tribune PARIS Not long ago, a friend recommended to Maria that she check out a new American electronic rock band, the Postal Service.
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
.
As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
.
More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
.
"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
.
The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
.
International Herald Tribune PARIS Not long ago, a friend recommended to Maria that she check out a new American electronic rock band, the Postal Service.
.
So she booted up Poisoned, her favorite file-sharing program, and had a look on the hard drives of millions of other people who, like her, were logged into a virtual swap meet of digital music files.
.
Once she found a few of the band's songs, in a few minutes they were stored away on the hard drive of her Apple iBook, ready to be played, copied to her iPod player or made available to countless other downloaders.
.
Maria, a 27-year-old Portuguese student living in Paris, estimated that she had copied about 300 songs this way over the past month - all without paying a cent for them. Her library of illegally downloaded tracks numbers in the region of 2,500, she said, but she does not consider herself a serious music pirate.
.
"I check around almost every day, although I don't always get something," Maria said. "It all depends on what's out there."
.
Aleix, 23, has been a regular music downloader since he moved to Paris from Barcelona two years ago. He has about 2,600 music files saved on his PC and sometimes downloads as many as 100 songs a week. Aleix declined to name his favorite file-sharing sites, most of them Spanish, for fear that they might be shut down.
.
"People learn about them through word of mouth," he said. "You can't find them if you search the name on Google, and if you do, that probably means it's going to disappear soon."
.
Maria and Aleix, who did not want their last names disclosed, are two of an estimated 7.4 million daily users of so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing networks worldwide who download a total of 410 million music files every day, compared with daily sales of CD albums and singles of just under five million units, according to Idate, a market researcher in Montpellier, France.
.
Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, Idate said, while the United States accounts for 43 percent.
.
Most file-sharing sites are compatible with one of five main networks - FasTrack, Gnutella, OpenNap, eDonkey and OpenFT - built around a specific family of free open source software that, when launched, connects the user's PC directly to other computers without relying on a central server, as Napster did before a music industry lawsuit shut it down in 2001.
.
Some programs, like Kazaa, BearShare and LimeWire, are developed by companies, many of them based in the United States, with legitimate online businesses who say they cannot police the kind of content their customers choose to download or make available to others. Others, like WinMX, Grokster and Gnucleus, were created by anonymous developer communities that exist only in cyberspace.
.
The overwhelming volume of music files available for free on the Internet is regularly cited by music industry executives as a primary reason for the sector's sharp downturn over the past four years.
.
In Germany, for example, where the incidence of online piracy is among the highest in Europe, recorded CD sales tumbled by 19 percent last year, the sixth consecutive year of decline, to 133 million. Meanwhile, sales of blank CDs used for "burning," or copying data such as music, stood at 325 million units. Sales of CD singles stood at 25 million, compared with an estimated 600 million songs downloaded over peer-to-peer networks.
.
Copyright and related protections apply in nearly every country. In 2001, the European Union extended protection for books, music and films to the Internet, although it gave member states significant leeway in its application. Individuals are permitted to make a limited number of copies for personal use, but this right does not extend to copyrighted material made available over file-sharing networks.
.
In late March, the music industry brought its battle against music pirates to Europe, targeting hundreds of "uploaders" - people who make large numbers of music files available to others via peer-to-peer networks.
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As of June 9, IFPI, a London-based music trade body, said that more than 100 people in Denmark had been served with civil demand letters and that more than a dozen had agreed to pay damages averaging E3,000, or $3,600, each. A 23-year-old man from Cottbus, Germany, agreed this month to pay an E8,000 fine after police searched his computer and found 6,000 music files stored on it in MP3 format and 70 burned CDs. In Italy, criminal charges have been filed against at least 30 people since March after police seized computers and CDs containing about 50,000 music files.
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More than half of music file-sharers are between the ages of 18 and 29. Most of them do their downloading either at home or, as in the United States, on university campuses. But as more households gain access to broadband services - 18 percent of Internet users in Germany, 32 percent in France and 25 percent in Britain, according to the market researcher GartnerG2 - downloading is becoming popular with older users as well.
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"Today it is not rare that people of all ages and all social categories can be seen downloading over P2P," said Laurent Michaud, an analyst at Idate. "The software is free and very accessible. Anyone can learn to use it within a few minutes."
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The record industry says its legal actions and the publicity surrounding them are having some effect. IFPI said that 7 out of 10 people in Britain, Denmark, France and Germany were now aware that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission was illegal, up slightly from 66 percent at the end of last year. Meanwhile, 59 percent of people polled in these countries said that criminal and civil action against file-sharers probably would be an effective deterrent to piracy, compared with 55 percent in December. The number of music files available on peer-to-peer networks also has fallen, to around 700 million today from 800 million in January and a billion in June 2003. But that still leaves a lot of unreformed song-swappers out there. Maria said she was skeptical that prosecuting a selected few Internet pirates would be effective. "It is hard to believe that is going to work," she said. "There are so many people doing it, and they can't go after everyone."
International Herald Tribune