Oh dear. It feels like the year 2000.

Once again the music industry is resolved to protect its property against the threat of illegal downloads - this time with the help of ISPs and some prodding from the French Government.

At the turn of the century it was Napster, the file-sharing site set up by Shawn Fanning, 19. The culprit of choice these days tends to be BitTorrent. There have been dozens in between - Kazaa, Limewire, and Grokster, to name a few. There will be countless more in the future.

But the record industry's attempts to prevent online piracy seem like holding a tissue up to the breeze. Technology called peer-to-peer file-sharing has decentralised the whole process of distributing files - legally or illegally. There is no central server on whose door the authorities can knock. The task is shared between the myriad computers - all connected to the internet - that share content between themselves.

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Even if - as the record industry is pushing for in Britain - an ISP is willing to hand over the details of a customer who is connected to such a network, the problem is that the networks shift all the time.

Add to that a more recent evolution called "dynamic web addresses", which allow wily operators effectively to change the location of their servers on an almost constant basis, and even the most stubborn of enforcers must begin to consider raising the white flag.

In truth, record labels' response to the problem of illegal downloads has been much more nuanced. Several labels have struck agreements with providers of internet companies that allow for legal distribution of copyright content. Last.fm, a British website, allows users to stream an enormous amount of content "on demand" from all the major labels - admittedly only three times - at which point they are given the option to buy it.

Napster - once the bane of the labels' life - is now a legal service, which offers access to a library of more than 5 million tracks that can be played through a computer for £9.95 a month, and a version has now been created for mobile phones.

There have been murmurings of other, more technological means of enforcement. Microsoft, which makes software that prevents legally downloaded content from being copied, has floated the idea of introducing media players that recognise - and block - pirated content.

But the debate about whether such software - known as digital rights management (DRM) - may provide a silver-bullet solution for labels has largely been lost.

When people realised that DRM software would prevent them from making a personal copy of a track they had bought legitimately from iTunes - for instance to play on their phone - they complained in huge numbers. The labels have now begun offering DRM-free tracks on iTunes.

What is astonishing is just how pronounced are the parallels between the debate today and that in 2000 (and how little labels seem to have learnt). Then, they were suing Napster in the one breath, and in the next doing deals with it that would result in the service becoming legal.

Now it is the ISPs at whom they point their fingers, saying that they are not pulling their weight with enforcement. Yet most record-label executives agree that the near-term solution is for ISPs to offer unlimited access to a large music library as part of a customer's broadband package - and share in the revenue.

In France, such services already exist - for a supplement of €6 (£4.75) on top of the monthly package.

In Britain, it is the mobile phone companies that tend to have provoked the labels' most progressive instincts. Vodafone gives customers access to a library of 1.5 million songs for £8 a month on top of their existing tariff, using a service called MusicStation. This year Nokia will introduce its Comes With Music phone, which will sync directly with Universal's catalogue, the minute the customer signs the contract with an operator.

To its credit the BPI, which represents labels in Britain, is doing its best avoid the need for legislation by coming to an agreement with the ISPs about their role, and a total of 150 prosecutions in the past five years suggests that it does not really see hard-nosed enforcement as viable - or desirable - in the long term.

But the sooner labels realise that the greatest priority is to reorganise their business models - so that the ISPs are parties with whom they can share revenue, rather than scold - the better.

That way they can also begin to rebuild the confidence of fans, many of whom are rightly baffled that, against all the odds, the digital age has in many ways made legal music harder, rather than easier, to access.

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