RIAA preparing lawsuits against filesharers

[Dark Jedi]

http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503.asp

Hmm... this could open up the biggest can of worms ever seen.

A brief snippet...

WASHINGTON (June 25, 2003) -- Starting tomorrow, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks. In making the announcement, the music industry cited its multi-year effort to educate the public about the illegality of unauthorized downloading, and underscored the fact that major music companies have made vast catalogues of music available to dozens of services to help create legitimate, high quality and inexpensive alternatives to online piracy.

[DaveW]

Funny how the kitty pr0n sharers have less to fear from the authorities than those who share Britney's latest single... oh wait, maybe thats the same group of people :)

[netviper13]

Hmm, let's see

songs downloaded in the last week: ~20

CDs purchased in the last week: 4, which = 100 songs (one CD was a two-CD set).

Bring it on RIAA!

[Dark Jedi]

An additional thought would be...

What about the rest of the world? This covers America, but other places...? A very large undertaking in anyone's language. ;)

[Oscar]

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/criminals.jpg (http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/music-to-our-ears.php)

Boycott the RIAA. Join the EFF.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by DaveW
Funny how the kitty pr0n sharers have less to fear from the authorities than those who share Britney's latest single... oh wait, maybe thats the same group of people :)

Britney's legal now, pal :p That argument might have been true a few years back ;)

[styles-T]

http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16878

Looks like they're going to file hundreds of lawsuits to P2P users..:eek:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced that it is to proactively target individual users who use P2P networks to download unlicensed music files.

Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said that the trade body would sue those it deemed to be the chief offenders of music copyrights, and that he expected several hundred law suits to be filed within the next ten weeks. The RIAA plans to gather evidence against individual users of file-sharing systems such as Kazaa and Grokster by using software to scan the public directories of peer-to-peer networks.

The RIAA’s latest offensive in ‘The War on Piracy’ comes after separate court decisions ruled that P2P operators were not responsible for any illegal activity by those using their networks and that ISP Verizon must turn over the name of a subscribers who the RIAA claimed had downloaded hundreds of unlicensed tracks. The combination has emboldened the trade body to target individuals, regardless of age, in a move likely to see it come up against an axis-of-college-students.

With US copyright law allowing for damages of between E660 (USD750) and E131,220 (USD150,000) per music track infringement, the consequences for those at the sharp end of the RIAA’s legal strategy could be very severe indeed.

The many critics of the trade body’s legal posturing, however, point out that there has been no confirmed link between the decline of music sales of the last few years and music downloading. Some commentators say that overpriced CDs and a cynical, marketing-driven outpouring of derivative musical pap may be more significant factors in the industry’s decline. After the recent success enjoyed by iTunes, there appears a convincing argument to be made that the RIAA would be better off drafting new copyright agreements to steer digital downloading towards legitimacy, rather than risking a backlash from angry consumers during a time of economic hardship.