Lasse Penttinen
21 Jul 2004 10:36
iMesh peer-to-peer file sharing network claims to have over 10 million users globally. The Recording Industry Association of America started legal action agains them back in 2003, and their efforts paid off. iMesh agrees to prevent unauthorized song swapping and pay a compensation of $4.1m for the RIAA.
iMesh hasn't said why it agreed to settle out of court, but it's likely it found itself seeing defeat in the courts or financial ruin resulting from protracted legal conflict. Whatever, the company was spinning the settlement today as a "pioneering" move in the world of P2P.Source: The Register
iMesh will now seek to create a P2P environment in which users can share songs legally - and that means paying for them. "It allows us the opportunity to migrate to a business model that will continue to provide users with the P2P experience that they have come to expect from iMesh," company COO Ofer Shabtai said in a statement.