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General counsel Roz Groome told the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport inquiry into New Media and the Creative Industries that the site is illegal in the UK and that downloading music from it is illegal.

'We are going to sue AllofMP3.com in the UK courts - we are going to seek a judgment not against the users of the site, but against the site itself,' she said.

The UK music industry umbrella organisation had previously declined to deny speculation that BPI may pursue individual

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downloaders.

Legal action will increase the pressure on the Russian site, both at home, where it currently faces two separate legal actions, and abroad. US trade officials are reported to have insisted on the closure of the site as pre-requisite for Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization.

As well as rejecting legal action against AllofMP3 users, the BPI also promised to continue to permit the practice of ripping CDs and transferring the music to a portable player, which, strictly speaking, is a violation of copyright.

'Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates,' said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.

'We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.'