Petteri Pyyny
24 May 2002 15:55
RIAA has sued one of the oldest file-swapping services, AudioGalaxy, for copyright infringement.
AudioGalaxy started filtering copyrighted material in mid-2001 after Napster was forced to shut down. Now RIAA claims that company's filtering efforts haven't been effective -- the same claim that actually brought Napster offline for good.
Not very surprisingly, National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents songwriters, joined RIAA in the lawsuit.
RIAA has currently pending legal action against Napster, AudioGalaxy, KaZaA BV (original developer of the KaZaA and FastTrack network), Streamcast Networks (operators of Morpheus), Madster (formerly known as Aimster), MP3Board.com (only non-P2P company of these) and Grokster. Madster and Napster are already virtually out of P2P business and rest of the P2P companies have indicated that their legal costs might actually fold at least some of the companies eventually.