In recent weeks, Hong Kong's recording industry has flexed substantial legal muscle in its fight against online music filesharing.

It has sued an unemployed father of two and driven a 15-year-old girl to depression, vowing to broaden its legal offensive until it has successfully stamped out illicit music downloading.

But lately, it has also been trying to send a different message: we care about families, too.

"The Internet is full of information, but it's also full of danger. We feel it's a social cause to call on parents to look after their children," said Ricky Fung, chief executive of the local branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents some of the world's largest music conglomerates.

For months, the industry has moved swiftly against music uploaders, inflicting heavy financial punishments on citizens caught during its periodic online sweeps. But by carefully balancing an unrelenting legal campaign with a calculated public relations appeal aimed at parents and students, the industry has so far managed to avoid being painted as a ruthless profit-obsessed machine - a perception that the American experience shows could do the industry more harm than good in the long run.

Since January, Fung has led the industry's dogged HK$2 million legal campaign against online piracy. After the industry won an order from the High Court forcing Internet companies to unmask music uploaders that month, it threatened dozens of Hong Kong residents with lawsuits before steering them to HK$24,000 settlements.

Last week, the industry announced another wave of legal action against 50 others, reaffirming its commitment to sue anyone, young or old, caught sharing copyrighted music over the Internet.

But more and more, the IFPI is also seeing the need to take a more sensitive approach, especially since all of the offenders in the first round of litigation were the young children of Internet subscribers, all between 12 and 19 years old - a fact Fung described as "surprising."

After announcing its latest legal campaign last week, Fung tried to shed the industry's bad-guy image by adopting a more comforting voice of concern, educating parents about the perils of Internet downloading.

"The work we're trying to do now is to face Hong Kong parents and tell them to watch their kids and their online behavior," Fung said.

"Many parents buy a computer for their children to do their homework, and they're happy that their children are not out in the streets late at night. But they don't know what their kids are doing behind closed doors."

He portrayed the Internet as a "hazardous" place where children are exposed to pornography and, of course, the risk of hefty lawsuits.

Stephen Selby, the government's director of intellectual property, was also on hand to unveil a new brochure showcasing the gentler approach.

"There are ways to enjoy downloaded music and still stay safe and legal," says the smiling boy in a cartoon on the cover of the brochure. "Get your children to show you how they are using the computer and what they are sharing. Talk about copyright, and who loses out when songs get distributed on the Internet - performing artists? Songwriters?"

Selby said: "Our message to parents is that you need to show you care. You don't have to have deep technical knowledge. Just pay attention and show interest in what they're doing."

The industry's recent charm offensive is no accident. In a sense, it is an admission that legal options, while effective, can't succeed on their own.

"What we want to say is that protecting intellectual property is not just wagging the finger and saying `Naughty, naughty,"' Selby said. "They need to know there's a risk of getting caught, yes. But we have to show the positive side too - that this is Hong Kong's prosperity, our future."

In North America and Europe, attempts by the recording industry to only pursue legal action against filesharers have triggered anger, boycotts and widespread portrayal of the industry as greedy and "evil."

It did not help that one of the first lawsuits the Recording Industry Association of America brought in September 2003 targeted Brianna LaHara, 12, an honor student from a single-parent family in New York.

"I got really scared. My stomach was all turning," LaHara said after she saw the lawsuit. "Out of all people, why did they pick me?"

After a whirlwind of bad publicity, the RIAA quickly settled with LaHara for US$2,000 (HK$15,600) and started a softer campaign emphasizing respect for intellectual property, an effort helped in large part by the wildly successful launch of Apple's legal online music store in the United States.

But it was too late to stop a massive "RIAA is evil" movement from taking root, one that found its voice in blogs, Internet chatrooms and on T-shirts.

Hong Kong's recording industry has learned much from this overseas experience, using a careful mixture of carrot and stick right from the outset of its campaign, in order to make its point without coming across as the villain.

So far it has done well, but success was never assured.

The IFPI's first lawsuit happened to fall on Yeung Chun-choi, 54, an unemployed father who said he did not even know how to turn on his computer. The second left a 15-year-old Kwun Tong girl so depressed she refused to go to school - or even take showers.

Part of the industry's success so far has been a result of its partnership with the government, which has helped to take the message of copyright protection to middle schools.

It is a strategy that fits well with the IFPI's heavier handed legal assault, Selby said. "Our activities have an educational role, but the other enforcement is what the IFPI is doing now. Both sides need to happen to resolve this issue," he said.

The government is savvy enough to know that you cannot always reach kids through their parents.

While the IFPI was seeking online uploaders' personal details through the High Court in January, the administration was announcing the launch of its "Youth League Against Internet Piracy," a scheme that officials hope will inculcate respect for copyright at an early age among Hong Kong's Scouts and Girl Guides, while encouraging them to report illegal online file-sharing activities to the government.

Slated for launch in July, when school is out for the summer, the joint project of the Intellectual Property Department and the Customs and Excise Department will lavish "generous" financial support on 11 local youth uniformed organizations, including the Girl Guides and Scout Association, the Hong Kong Air Cadet Corps, the Boys' Brigade and the Girls' Brigade.

These groups' combined 200,000 members, all aged between nine and 25, will report on others who make uploadable music files, called "seeds," available on the Internet.

"Each organization joining the Youth League will be assigned with a unique log-on password, which allows its own members to log on the Web page and report details of illegal BT file- sharing activities found on local discussion forums," the government said, referring to the online filesharing program BitTorrent.

"Upon receiving the information, [customs] will scan the data and pass them to respective copyright representatives, who will then ascertain the validity of the information and notify corresponding Web masters of the discussion forums to take appropriate action."

For all the creativity of the measures, it will not likely diminish the IFPI's resolve to continue its legal fight any time soon. Fung describes the lawsuits as a last resort in the industry's life-and- death struggle, blaming online filesharing for pushing down sales of music CDs in Hong Kong by 32 percent between 2000 and 2004, from HK$926 million to HK$629 million.

Legislators and legal scholars focusing on intellectual property rights tend to agree with the IFPI's approach.

Kevin Pun Kwok-hung, an associate professor at Hong Kong University who specializes in information technology and intellectual property law, calls the industry's approach logical and reasonable. "I think definitely that's the right way to go," Pun said, pointing out that the industry has been trying to fight infringement through other means. "Everyone has the right to protect their private interests."

Legislator Sin Chung-kai, who represents the IT sector in the Legislative Council, says the lawsuits are something the record firms "have to do."

Sin said: "Overall, people in Hong Kong pay insufficient respect to copyright. Hong Kong does produce many good singers and songs, and they can create value for Hong Kong. These illegal infringements simply destroy our own industries."

But will the strategy work?

"It all depends on how the public perceives the effectiveness of such actions, but it definitely has some deterrent effect," Pun said. "How much, we'll have to see."