John Kennedy, the trade body's chairman welcomed the move, telling Billboard: "The judgment means that music rights owners can still take actions to enforce their rights, and it has sent out a clear signal that member states have to get the right balance between privacy and enforcement of intellectual property rights and that intellectual property rights can neither be ignored nor neglected."

While there is no doubt that steps such as this are favorable for the record industry trade bodies in fighting the problems posed by illegal downloading, the simple fact remains that legitimate downloading has not made any inroads despite the growth in availability of products in the last few months.

Since the music companies are dismantling use of anti-piracy technology encoded into downloadable tracks, this would seem to make it easier for an increase in digital sales to occur. However, that has not happened, so the real question should be what kind of suggestions the trade bodies can make to the record labels and marketing firms to sell the new formats becoming available. The new tracks that the major labels are releasing are comparable in quality to the tracks found at illegal sites.