File-sharers convicted: A first

This week saw the first convictions of file-sharers, Reuters reports. But the two middle-aged men from Texas and New York state were not your run-of-the-mill users of P2P services like Kazaa (more than 7,000 of whom have been sued by the recording industry to date). They "operated hubs in a file-sharing network that required members to share between one gigabyte and 100 gigabytes of material, the equivalent of 250,000 songs," according to Reuters. The US Justice Department said investigators downloaded material worth $25,000 from the two hubs. Both men pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement, and they each face up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, with sentencing due in late April. Meanwhile, the BBC reports that file-sharing is not only here to stay but - even as they continue suing file-swappers - media corporations are working on ways to capitalize on the phenomenon. Also, legal downloading is soaring, with sales of pay-per-tune songs having "shot up more than tenfold in 2004," according to the BBC.

BTW, parents of digital music fans, here are a few aids and heads-ups: a little primer from the Washington Post, explaining formats, retailers, and tune players; Wired magazine's inside look at wildly popular P2P service BitTorrent and its creator; the latest global figures on file-sharing at itWorldCanada.com; BBC confirmation that new, harder-to-detect P2P services are popping up all the time; and the Associated Press on how movie file-swapping's a little different from the music P2P scene.