I was one of the people who suggested the 'rogue file' scheme on the file sharing services," he told us. "I suggested that they should put out files with legitimate titles - and put inside them silence or random noise - and saturate the file sharing networks with those files. That did start the poisoning."

The goal was to discredit the networks so that casual users would quickly give up trying to download music. And so the plan went into action. The IPFI created a computer system that appeared to be many unrelated nodes, a network with many members that in fact resided in one location.

A former record label employee also confirmed this week that the industries do order multiple DSL feeds to one location to simulate a P2P network. For the IPFI however, the poisoned network grew too expensive to justify. Before he left, says Warne, the IPFI's original poisoned system was closed down. The body wanted to concentrate its attentions on large scale copying outfits.

However, more recent evidence suggests that the technique is being used by major labels in-house, instead, and the sheer quantity of junk files found on the peer to peer networks today - purportedly residing on individual's PCs - points to continuing "poisoning". Why? Because users abort a junk download, or quickly delete a file. The alternative explanation for the persistence of this noise material is that users are extremely inattentive, and that's difficult to believe