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The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) announced today that the actions include the first in Portugal, where it claims the music market has been 'devastated' by the impact of file-sharing. The organisation said that hundreds of p2p users have so far paid an average of €2,633 to settle the lawsuits. Not one case has yet been tried in court.

The IFPI is also pressing for file sharers in Denmark to be disconnected by their Internet service provider; 130 French sharers have already been cut off as a result of the IFPI action.

In Italy, seventy computers have been seized, each of which was serving, on average, 1,000 users and storing 30TB of music files.

The latest lawsuits target users of all the major p2p networks, including FastTrack (Kazaa), Gnutella (BearShare), eDonkey, DirectConnect, BitTorrent, Limewire, WinMX and SoulSeek and they are being

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launched in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Iceland, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland in addition to Portugal.

Despite several tens of thousands of lawsuits across Europe and the US, there has been no overall drop in the levels of p2p sharing, although the IFPI says that it has fallen in certain countries where authorised services such as iTunes are established. With the IFPI escalating the penalties in France, and possibly Denmark, the emphasis has shifted from deterrence to punishment.

'This is a significant escalation in our worldwide campaign against illegal file-sharing,' said John Kennedy, IFPI chairman and CEO.

'People who file-share illegally often claim to be music fans but in fact they are hurting investment in music, breaking the law and risking financial penalties by their actions. There have now been so many campaigns to educate people that file-sharing is wrong and illegal that there is simply no excuse for people to continue,' he said.

In the UK, the BPI has now reached settlements with 102 file sharers and won summary court rulings against four others. Another 32 cases have yet to be resolved.

'We continue to make progress in court cases against illegal filesharers, and all the cases that have made it to court have ruled in our favour,' said BPI general counsel Roz Groome. 'Litigation will continue to be an important part of our campaign against illegal filesharing.'