The second largest file-sharing network on the internet has been severely disabled in a significant coup for the music industry's fight against piracy.

Seven servers on the notorious 'eDonkey' network, on which millions of users illegally share music and other files, were this week shut down following orders by German courts, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said.

The closure would knock out about third of eDonkey's 4 million users and cause "a major disruption" to one of the world's "top three file-sharing networks" the IFPI said in a statement.

Following the dismantling of several better-known networks, including Kazaa, millions of file-sharers have shifted to eDonkey, which until recently has evaded authorities because of its murky, decentralised nature.

The injunctions, which were issued by seven German courts against the hosts of the eDonkey 'servers', will mean that 1.3 million users wanting to share songs can no longer connect with one another.

eDonkey has presented a problem for the music industry because, unlike some of its predecessors, it is not owned by a company, and instead is 'run' by a loose association of programmers who are constantly updating its protocols and shifting its location.

Several experts have rated it as the second largest contributor to internet-based piracy, behind BitTorrent.

The IFPI said that rather than target those responsible for the software, the operation had instead focused on the operators of servers - the nodes through which traffic on the networks passes - which were located in several locations across Germany.

Similar injunctions have been been issued against eDonkey-linked servers in France and the Netherlands.

"Unlike Kazaa, you can't sue one person on eDonkey and take the entire network down - it's propped up by a number of individuals who run servers," Jo Oliver, head of litigation at the IFPI said.

"This is a multi-country campaign and we will continue to take action against individuals who are deliberately and flagrantly violating the rights of artists and record companies," she said.

Legal action by record companies has forced the closure of Kazaa and Grokster, another peer-to-peer site, but has so far failed to stem the decline of CD sales, which have fallen by 23 per cent since 2000.

Surveys suggest that 14 per cent of regular web users still exchange music files for free.

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