The file sharing in the USA is now “under control” according to the American branch organisation RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which points to that several legal actions against illegal filesharing have been successful while the download of legal material is increasing and the illegal filesharing hasn’t grown at the same speed lately. The court order that was decreed in June last year that made filesharing networks responsible for the users’ actions is suppose to be an important part of this. The court order have made several networks shutdown or try to alter its areas of use. If you look to the number of users they have still increased a lot compared to last year.
10 million filesharers are currently active in the USA, according to the analysts at BigChampagne.com, which you can compare to the previous year’s 8.7 million. At the same time it says that the heavy increase in pirated material online has started to stagnate after the industry’s increased counter-actions.
“The RIAA has sued thousands of individuals, and 4,500 of them have already settled for fines of around $4,000 per case. While album sales are still slightly down this year, digital downloads are beginning to pick up the slack. Sales increased 77 percent, and 23.7 million digital albums have sold this year, up from 13.4 million at this time last year.”
