James Delahunty
1 Jul 2005 8:47
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has again launched another wave of lawsuits against file sharers it alleges to have distributed copyrighted songs online through P2P networks. This time, 784 file sharers are on the RIAA's hit list, and will now be forced to settle out of court for thousands of dollars. If they refuse to settle, the RIAA could claim hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in damages.
This brings the total number of P2P users sued by the RIAA to about 11,000, which is huge figure but quite miniscule when you put it up against the 5 million users that currently use the eDonkey2000 network to share files. This "sue em all" tactic is what the RIAA refers to as a deterrent, and claims from the group are that this deterrent is working. However, P2P monitoring services refuse to believe that and point out that the number of users of P2P networks is rising day by day.
Yesterday we reported on a series of raids targeted against internet "warez" groups whom the FBI claims are responsible for most of the copyrighted works being shared on the Internet. There were over 90 searches internationally, and about $50,000,000 in pirated material was seized. "We have shown law enforcement can find and prosecute those who try to use the internet to create piracy networks," said US attorney general Alberto Gonzales. This raid also followed the infamous decision by the Supreme Court on Monday.
The Supreme Court ruled that any owners/developers of P2P networks who promote its use for piracy can be sued, but that doesn't change the legality of decentralised P2P services. The MGM vs. Grokster case had seen two lower court decisions in Grokster’s favour. Some of the P2P users targeted in this series of lawsuits were users of the Grokster network.
Source:
BBC News