The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) policy of suing users caught downloading music illegally has done nothing to slow the trade of copyrighted music on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
"The lawsuit campaign has enriched only lawyers, rather than compensating artists for file sharing," the EFF declared in a 25-page report.
"One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma."
The EFF claims that since the RIAA began suing individual users, traffic on P2P file-sharing services has ballooned from 3.3m monthly users in August of 2003 to more than 8.8m by June of 2005.