An Italian court has ordered 54 people behind illegal music download sites to pay more than €2.4 million (£2 million) in damages for copyright infringement following a six-year investigation. The case was first brought against various music download sites in 2003 by the Federation Against Music Piracy—which represents all four major labels in Italy—the IFPI-affiliated Italian Music Industry Federation (FIMI) and the Italian Fiscal Police.

FIMI president Enzo Mazza told paidContent:UK that “several mp3 download sites” were targeted including Mp3download.it and that quite unlike the Swedish Pirate Bay case in April—which didn’t stop that site from operating—all the sites involved in the case have now been shut down. The investigation was stalled by the expiry of the charges’ time period—but the Judge for Preliminary Investigations decided that offences had taken place and according to FIMI “ordered the seizure and the destruction of the computers in question and the forfeiture of money that had been previously frozen by the Office of the Public Prosecutor amounting to more than €2.4 million”.

Separately, Giancarlo Mancusi, a public prosecutor in the northern town of Bergamo, has been running his own legal campaign against The Pirate Bay under Italian law and still hopes to bring the four founders to justice in what would be that site’s first conviction outside Sweden. Mazza told me that case is unconnected to today’s conviction and will be examined by the Supreme Court next November.

So in the cat and mouse game of online piracy litigation, we’ll put this one down as a home win for the music industry. But much like the IFPI-orchestrated Pirate Bay case, the victory may start to look somewhat hollow as more is learned about the sheer scale and growth of file-sharing. Whether it’s ISP-level technical measures, a system of warnings, protocol blocks, an information campaign to change people’s habits or investment in legal download or streaming services, it’s going to take a lot more than lawsuits to solve this problem.

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