The Canadian Recording Industry Association has filed its appeal of a court decision made last month that protects the identities of people who upload music files to the Internet for sharing.

The court decision on March 13 by Judge Konrad von Finckenstein of the Federal Court quashed a request by the CRIA that Internet Service Providers be forced to reveal the identities of alleged music uploaders.

The CRIA wanted the identities of 29 alleged uploaders in order to pursue legal action against them.

In addition to denying the CRIA's request, the judge also made additional rulings on issues involving copyright, online privacy and the liability of Internet Service Providers. None of his decisions were considered favourable to the recording industry.

"Today we filed an appeal of last month's court decision," CRIA General Counsel Richard Pfohl said in a statement. "We will argue that the decision was in error on a number of legal bases.

"In our view, Canadian copyright law does not allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers on the Internet," he said.

The recording industry has claimed that the proliferation of file-sharing services such as Kazaa has eroded sales and profits. However, a number of industry reports have contradicted that claim.