U.S. lawmakers have asked Attorney General John
Ashcroft ( news - web sites) to go after Internet users who download
unauthorized songs and other copyrighted material, raising the possibility of jail
time for digital-music fans.

In a July 25 letter released late Thursday, some 19 lawmakers from both sides
of the aisle asked Ashcroft to prosecute "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and
Morpheus and the users who swap digital songs, video clips and other files
without permission from artists or their record labels.

The Justice Department ( news - web sites) should also devote more resources
to policing online copyrights, the lawmakers said in their letter.

"Such an effort is increasingly important as online theft of our nation's creative
works is a growing threat to our culture and economy," the letter said.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The recording industry says peer-to-peer services cut into CD sales, and has
been battling them in court since 1999, when the five major labels sued pioneer
service Napster ( news - web sites) Inc.

A U.S. federal judge ordered Napster to shut down its service in July 2001, but
upstarts like Kazaa and Morpheus soon took its place. Kazaa, which in
addition to music allows users to swap movies and other media files, said this
week that its free software had been downloaded 100 million times.

Music labels have not ruled out suing individual users, and have pushed for the
right to flood peer-to-peer networks with bogus files, or disrupt them by other
means.

While a debate has raged on Capitol Hill over the proper balance between
copyright and technological innovation, U.S. law-enforcement authorities have
taken a minimal role.

The Justice Department filed a supporting motion siding with the record labels
in the Napster case, but has brought no cases of its own.

The move was welcomed by the Recording Industry Association of America (
news - web sites), which represents the five major labels --Bertelsmann AG (
news - web sites), Vivendi Universal, Sony Corp ( news - web sites) ., AOL
Time Warner Inc . and EMI Group Plc ( news - web sites) .

"There is no doubt, mass copying off the Internet is illegal and deserves to be a
high priority for the Department of Justice ( news - web sites)," said RIAA
Chairman Hilary Rosen in a statement.

An analyst for a digital civil-liberties group said the Justice Department probably
had better things to do with its time.

The letter "implies that Justice should be going after relatively innocent
behaviors that I suspect most Americans don't think warrant the time," said
Alan Davidson, an associate director at the Center for Democracy and
Technology.

On the other hand, "we would much rather see current authorities be used
before Congress goes and creates brand new laws," Davidson said.

A staffer for Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who signed the letter, said
that lawmakers did not want FBI ( news - web sites) agents to arrest casual
users but instead go after operators of network "nodes" that handle much of the
traffic.

Among those signing the letter were: Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden;
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner; Virginia Democratic Rep.
Bobby Scott; Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers; North Carolina
Republican Rep. Howard Coble; and California Democratic Sen. Dianne
Feinstein.