Leader: File-sharing suits out of tune with music market

File-sharing is illegal. Musicians know that, record labels know that and file-sharers are more than well aware of that. So the news today that industry body The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is suing 28 file-sharers comes as no surprise.

While the rights and wrongs are pretty clear-cut in the law's eyes – it's illegal; if you do it, you're likely to get into trouble – the BPI's policy seems a little confused.

Unlike its US equivalent, the RIAA, the BPI has gone for suing uploaders rather than downloaders to "cut the problem off at its source". It leaves a huge swathe of downloaders operating in safety and the thought of 28 out of the whole uploading community being sued isn't exactly going to give many people sleepless nights.

At least the RIAA tried to hit big – most recently, they filed suits against more than 700 file-sharers in one go.

Illegal music uploading is dropping and not in small measures either – according to a BPI spokesman, by hundreds of millions. Is the campaign to get litigious getting results? Possibly. But it's certainly no coincidence that the as the amount of legal downloads has boomed, the number of illegal downloads has fallen significantly.

The BPI, like others before it, makes a decent case for legal action – along the lines of 'if we don't keep the record labels ticking over now, there's no incentive to for them to keep putting money into new bands.'

But when those same record labels are reportedly creaming off a huge proportion of the profits from legal online music and leaving song-shops with a paltry four per cent, it does look a little like shooting yourself in the foot and a lot like 'one rule for us, one rule for them'.

For music fans, legal downloading is a real boon – most don't fancy being on the wrong side of the law and with tracks at 29p and upwards, pocket-money prices are helping to knock the financial incentive that encourages piracy on the head.

But while the mainstream is amply catered for, a lot of smaller record labels and more niche styles are still by and large neglected in the digital realm, giving some downloaders what they see as little alternative but to turn to the song-swappers.

Perhaps the BPI would have better spent its lawyers' fees on nurturing the legal market instead of cracking down on the illegal one.