The record industry loves suing people. The music industry frequently behaves like the people on those 'Horrific Personal Injury 4 U No Win No Claim No Fee' adverts, except instead of a woman shouting "WILL I GET 100% OF THE COMPENSATION?", imagine a bunch of fearful little record execs shouting "WILL WE GET TIED UP IN NEAR POINTLESS LITIGATION FOR MANY YEARS TO COME?"

The US Major labels have now turned their attention to Usenet.com, who they claim are aiding illegal downloading by offering an anonymous environment where music files are swapped at will with virtually no chance of being detected.

This follows the legal ruling earlier this month, where filesharer Jammie Thomas, was ordered to pay more than $220,000 to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Major labels, after trading 24 files online. Previously, they've tried to sue everyone from YouTube to Limewire, but this case seems to straddle both the websites and the users, with the case against Usenet clearly strongly targeted at revealing individual filesharers, as well as the services they are using to swap music.

Far be it for us to condone illegal filesharing, but regardless of the result of this, or any other lawsuit, people are going to continue to download music illegally. Cases like this have no effect, beyond making the industry look scared and reactionary. Rather than just scream and throw affidavits at all and sundry in denial that the Internet has happened, possibly the Majors could try to come up with some new strategies to deal with their rapidly-collapsing business models?