Yesterday we reported that the RIAA had apologized for sending
incorrect legal notices of alleged Internet copyright violations to Penn State
University. Today we can read on ZDNet that the RIAA has admitted to
sending dozens of erroneous letters alleging copyright violations:
 The RIAA
said Tuesday that a temporary worker was responsible for firing off legal
notifications last week that invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
without confirming that any copyrighted files were actually being offered
for download. "We have sent two dozen withdrawal notices -- all appear
related to this particular temp," the RIAA said in a statement. "We
apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."
The errors represent a black eye for the RIAA's latest
efforts against piracy, which rely on automated crawlers to scour the
Internet in an attempt to find material that is being distributed in a way
that violates federal copyright law. The RIAA refuses to disclose what
techniques its crawlers use, but the group appears to employ companies
such as MediaForce and MediaDefender. Its copyright enforcers are not
required to listen to an allegedly infringing MP3 file in its entirety,
the RIAA has acknowledged.
While the RIAA said that only 24 faulty letters have
been sent, a comparison of the tracking numbers inserted in the Penn State
and Speakeasy notices shows they differ by 136 numbers. That difference
implies that hundreds of additional notifications may have been fired off
around the same time, though not necessarily by the same RIAA
worker. |
The RIAA would not say who the temporary employee worked for and
if the person had been fired. Read the complete article here.
Source: ZDNet UK
