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By Staff (EUNN) London - The British music industry has asked Internet Service Providers to shut down 59 web sites it's identified that are ilelgally sharing music files in acts of online piracy, saying the ISPs have failed to stop the illegal activity. BPI is the trade association for the UK record indusrty and Monday asked the ISPs to cooperate in shutting down the sites. Illegal peer-to-peer filesharing has already had an enormous effect on British music salse; with an estimated £1.1bn in revenue lost in the last three years as a direct result, the BPI said. BPI said it wrote to internet service providers Tiscali and Cable & Wireless Monday requesting that they suspend those accounts used for illegal filesharing. The move marks a significant development of the BPI's three year long campaign against illegal filesharing. Until now the BPI has concentrated its efforts on indiivdula uploaders. It has pursued legal action against 139 uploaders. All four cases which have gone to court have been found in the BPI's favour. 111 uploaders have chosne to settle out of court paying amounts of up to £6,500 in settlement. BPI Chairman Peter Jamieosn said, "We have demonstrated in the courts that unauthorised filesharing is against the law. We have said for months that it is unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement. We are providing Tiscali and Cable & Wireless with unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services. It is now up to them to put their house in order and pull the plug on these people." The BPI's evidence has been gathered uisng the unauthorised filesharing networks themselves. Whenever an individual uses a filesharing network they reveal the unique IP address for the internet account being used at that time. The BPI is able to identify from the IP address which ISP provides the service. But only the ISP knows to which individual the IP address belongs. The BPI has identified 17 Tiscali IP addresess and 42 Cable & Wireless IP addresses which have been used to upload significant quantities of music owned by BPI members. It is requesting that the ISPs suspend the accounts of the 59 individuals until they sign undertakings agreeing to stop unauthorised filseharing. BPI General Counsel Roz Groome said, "Both Tiscali and Cable & Wireless state in their terms of use for subscribers that internet accounts sohuld not be used for copyright infringement. We now invite them to enforce their own terms of use." BPI did not say whether it intends on filing lawsuits against Tiscali or Cable & Wireless if the two ISPs fail to enforce their own subscribers' "terms of use."
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