The Associated Press

The music industry's campaign of lawsuits and threats against song-swappers moved overseas Tuesday as trade groups went after 247 people in Europe and Canada they accused of piracy.

The London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said individuals in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Canada had been hit with lawsuits, criminal charges or threatening letters.

The federation promised similar actions in other countries in the coming months. National music-industry groups in Sweden and Britain recently began warning users of online song-sharing networks by sending them instant messages.

"This is our first coordinated effort to take this campaign over the range of countries where file stealing is a problem," said Allen Dixon, general counsel and executive director of the federation, which represents the recording industry worldwide.

The group claims piracy is behind a five-year global decline in music sales. It said worldwide sales of recorded music fell 7 percent in 2002, with a similar plunge expected in 2003 figures.

The Recording Industry Association of America began targeting individual file sharers last fall and has sued 1,977 people. The association has settled 400 cases, generally for a few thousand dollars each.

The actions in Europe and Canada were taken by national recording industry groups affiliated with the federation. The targets were people who made at least hundreds of songs - 54,000 tracks in one Danish case - available for distribution and copying on free file-sharing services, Dixon said.

The tactics differed in each country, but in each instance, the federation hopes to wrest a few thousand dollars in fines or settlements.

In most cases, the industry had the full cooperation of Internet service providers in identifying the defendants, except in Canada, where the recording industry filed its cases against unidentified people it hopes to find later.

Analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media said he thought the actions probably would have a chilling effect. If people are scared into ceasing to share their music collections online, free downloading services such as Kazaa will lose their value internationally.