The Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma), the trade association for Irish record companies, yesterday won a High Court decision requiring seven internet service providers (ISPs) to release the names and addresses of 23 people involved in sharing copyrighted music online.

Irma claims that between them, these 23 internet users have shared almost 180,000 songs, while one individual has provided 37,500 files for download.

The ISPs ordered to hand over the information are Digiweb, BT, Smart Telecom, Irish Broadband, NTL, Eircom and Imagine. Irma has pledged to pursue and prosecute all 23 of the individuals.

"They are stealing from our artists and affecting the livelihood of many people in the music industry," said Dick Doyle, director general of Irma. "We will not tolerate this and will do everything in our power to ensure they are brought to justice."

Mr Doyle said the 23 users were selected after it had monitored activity on the popular peer-to-peer networks Gnutella, FastTrack and DirectConnect. By default, when users install software to use these networks, they start sharing all music in certain directories on their PCs. As a result, many of the files being shared may have been acquired legally on CD or other formats.

To date, Irma has prosecuted some 66 individuals, 61 of whom have paid financial penalties. Mr Doyle said the average settlement was €2,500-€3,000.

Irma also seeks that those found to have engaged in file sharing undertake not to engage in the activity again, remove file sharing software from their machine and delete the MP3 files.

TJ McIntyre, chairman of civil liberties group Digital Rights Ireland, said while his organisation does not condone illegal downloading, he would have concerns that the individuals involved were not represented in court.