An Italian anti-piracy group is claiming a “major offensive” against nternet links to infringing music. Created by IFPI, the Federation Against Music Piracy (FPM) says that 20K torrents were removed from Mininova and another 10K links on other sites, along with 12 eD2K and Direct Connect servers.

The Federation Against Music Piracy (FPM) was created in 1996 when IFPI and FIMI (the Italian music industry federation) teamed up to spread its anti-piracy message more effectively in Italy.

Now FPM is claiming that a “major offensive” is underway against what it describes as “new forms of illegal file-sharing.” The group is claiming that it has successfully removed from the Internet more than 30,000 links to unauthorized music, which together generated 10 million illicit downloads.

Singling out Mininova as the single biggest host of links on its hitlist, FPM claims to have successfully ordered the torrent site to remove more than 20,000 torrents. Another 10,000 items were removed from online storage sites including Rapidshare and MegaUpload. FPM says that it will now work to have further infringing links removed on a daily basis.

In further action against file-sharing services, FPM claims to have shuttered a further 12 eD2K and Direct Connect servers although no further details have been made available.

Interestingly, Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer was not aware of FPM’s takedown bombardment. He told TorrentFreak that they haven’t received any emails from FPM. So, unless FPM was sending the requests from a different email address not associated with its domain, their claim might be a bit overstated.