The recording industry on Tuesday announced the filing of 8,000 lawsuits in 17 countries in an effort to deter music piracy on file-sharing networks. In announcing the legal assault, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said it had filed its first ever suits against illegal file sharing in Brazil, Mexico and Poland. The latest round of suits brought the number of such legal actions outside the United States to more than 13,000. "In each of the 17 countries involved in today''s actions there are legal music services available to consumers," John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI, said in a prepared statement.

"There is no excuse." In Brazil, more than 1 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded last year, the IFPI said. Record company revenues in the country, the largest market in Latin America, have fallen from $724.7 million in 2000 to $394.2 million last year. The IFPI blamed the drop on illegal file sharing. More than 2,300 people have paid an average of about $3,000 to settle the lawsuits, the trade group said. The defendants range from a laboratory assistant in Finland to a German parson. Many of the lawsuits name as defendants parents whose children have allegedly shared music illegally online.

The trade group is focusing its legal actions on users of unauthorized peer-to-peer services, including BitTorrent, eDonkey, DirectConnect, Gnutella, Limewire, SoulSeek and WinMX. Countries targeted in the latest round of lawsuits also included Argentina, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Switzerland.