Well, they say you can't knock German efficiency, and it seems the German record industry is doing its best to out litigate the US industry, despite coming to the whole 'let's target individual downloaders' thing rather late in the day. According to the German arm of the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry they have been taking action against suspected illegal downloaders at a rate of 5000 a month for the last five months - which means 25,000 file sharers have had a knock on the door.
To be fair to the RIAA, who have been busy launching hundreds of anti-P2P lawsuits every month for years now, it is slightly easier for the Germans because strict copyright laws there mean that all the IFPI have to do is report the IP addresses suspected of illegally file sharing to a public prosecutor, and they then issue copyright violation charges against the alleged sharer. The IFPI then steps back in to negotiate an out of court settlement. All of which speeds things up, compared to the US where the RIAA must go through the civil courts twice - once to win the identity of the IP address being used for file sharing, and then once to actual sue for copyright violation.
Commenting on their extensive anti-P2P action in recent months, an IFPI spokesman has told Billboard: "The IP addresses found on [file sharers'] computers are forwarded by IFPI to the public prosecutor's office, which then brings charges [under German copyright law]. On the basis of the illegally downloaded songs, it's easy to deduce that most of the suspects are young people. We then try to come to an out-of-court settlement on compensation with the parents, which can be between a few hundred and several thousand euros".
Meanwhile IFPI Germany Chairman Michael Haentjes, who is also CEO of independent music group Edel, has said that every one of the thousands of people targeted in the latest anti-P2P onslaught in Germany has settled out of court. But he admits that his country's copyright laws - and the threat of criminal charges - are helping with their campaign, meaning their success rates might not be matchable elsewhere. He says: "I don't know if our experience can be rolled out to other European countries because they each have different laws governing illegal downloads".