The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed the first lawsuits in its battle against users of peer-to-peer (P2P) sites, but confirmed that it will offer an amnesty to those it is not currently pursuing.

Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, confirmed that an initial 261 lawsuits had been filed in the US courts.

He claimed that this group of users had distributed over 1,000 files and represented the first "wave of litigation" out of the thousands it has targeted.

Sherman added that the people facing litigation were users of the major P2P sites such as Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus, but that users of other P2P sites would be targeted in the future.

"Our goal is not to be vindictive or punitive but to stop P2P users," Sherman said today.

He would not be drawn on the scale of the damages the RIAA would be seeking, but it is likely to be more than the $3,000 it has agreed to in previous cases which have been settled out of court.

"These settlements were reached before we had to file lawsuits. [The terms] were slightly more generous than if we were going through the litigation process," said Sherman.

But he promised that P2P users yet to be identified would be forgiven if they come forward.

The RIAA amnesty will require file sharers to sign a form at a specially set up website, www.musicunited.org, agreeing to destroy all illegal files on their PCs or CDs and promising never illegally to distribute files again.

Calling it an "olive branch", Sherman said: "If they voluntarily come forward we will not pursue action. They will have nothing to fear from us."