Record industry aims to scupper pirates

Not content with legal victories and out-of-court settlements with file-swapping systems such as Napster and Audiogalaxy, the record industry has now turned its attention to end-users.

But there is no need to kill your Kazaa connection just yet, unless you are a big fish in the file-swapping community.

This week, reports are emerging that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is planning to target file-share users who have the biggest caches of music and video files.

In the past, the record industry has been reluctant to target the end-users for fear of a customer backlash. But in what has been branded as a "last-ditch effort" to exert its authority, the industry will bring its arms to bear on the biggest pirates.

Although the reaction from the internet community has been, as expected, one of outrage, there are murmurings that this might be the smartest move the record companies have made.

As some have pointed out, it is pirates that are the problem, not the file-sharing technologies. "About time the true guilty party was sued," said one user on the Slashdot forum.

There is however a general feeling that the record companies will be fighting an uphill battle. Tracking down the big pirates will not be easy and for every one that goes down it is likely that another will pop up.

There is also some concern that the industry will raise the price of CDs to help pay for such actions, a move that would make it more unpopular with its customers than it already is.