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They include action by the BPI against 33 UK users of KaZaA, DirectConnect, BearShare, SoulSeek, Grokster and Imesh, bringing the total in this country to 90, the first 26 of which have been settled out of court to a total of £50,000.

'We have warned people time and again that unauthorised filesharing is against the law,' BPI general counsel Geoff Taylor said. 'Anyone who is engaged in this activity faces having to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. It's now easy to get music online legally. We will maintain our campaign until the message gets across.'

The 963 worldwide lawsuits include the first in Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan and the Netherlands and target several P2P applications that were previously untouched: eDonkey, DirectConnect, BitTorrent and Gnutella.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), which is co-ordinating

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the anti-file sharing activities, says that they are having a significant impact, particularly in Europe where 248 individuals have already paid fines averaging in excess of €3,000.

File sharing in Germany, where most lawsuits have taken place, dropped 35 per cent in 2004, the IFPI said. Worldwide, the number of KaZaA users has dropped by 45 per cent.

In addition to taking legal action, music industry bodies are continuing to send warnings to file sharers, with Spain and Sweden the latest countries to be targeted. Excluding the US, some 12 million messages have been sent around the world.

IFPI chairman and CEO, John Kennedy, said that the impact the anti-file sharing campaign has had in the past year gives reasons for the industry to be optimistic.

'Today, people across Europe can be in no doubt that uploading copyrighted music on to file-sharing networks is against the law, affects jobs, investment in music and livelihoods, and carries the risk of financial penalties,' he said. 'We have spent two years raising public awareness of this, and ignorance really is no longer an excuse.

'And there can be no doubt the campaign is having an impact. File-sharing is being contained: traffic on P2P networks which would have spiralled out of control a year ago has, in fact, began to slow down. Meanwhile legal ways of enjoying music online have taken off. People have begun to explore and enjoy the legal online music market in earnest.'