Legal action is being taken against 28 people in the UK for illegally swapping music over the Internet, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) announced yesterday.

Yesterday's action is the first of its kind in the UK - legal action has already been taken in the US.

The BPI, the UK record industry's trade association, announced that it was targeting "major up-loaders", the people who make their music collections available on the Internet, illegally, for other web users to share.

BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said: "We have been warning for months that unauthorised file sharing is illegal.

"These are not people casually downloading the odd track. They are up-loading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihood of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them."

The 28 UK Internet users targeted in the announcement do not yet know who they are. The BPI also has no knowledge of their identities and as yet only knows them by their domain address.

The BPI, which represents the record companies behind 90 per cent of sales in the UK, said everyone would have the opportunity to settle.

But it refused to divulge what settlement figure it would expect to receive.

The BPI has lodged court papers "to find out who these people are" and more cases are expected to follow.

BPI executive chairman Peter Jamieson said: "We are not trying to make criminals out of these people. We want reasonable compensation, an injunction and to send out a message that this activity is illegal."

The action will take the form of civil litigation, meaning that the offenders who are successfully sued will not end up with a criminal record.

One of the 28 people targeted has uploaded more than 7,000 music files, the Press conference was told.

Users of networks such as Kazaa, Imesh, Grokster, Bearshare and WinMX have all been targeted.

A total of 350,000 instant messages have been sent to users' desktops warning them of the consequences if they continue.