Lawyers began their final arguments today in a landmark music piracy case against global file-sharing giant Kazaa.

Solicitors for Australia’s recording industry branded the popular Kazaa computer file-swapping network “an engine of copyright piracy to a degree of magnitude never before seen” as they launched a court battle today to shut down its activities.

The US music industry was today stepping up its fight against Internet piracy by threatening legal action against hundreds of individual computer users who illegally share music files online.