Even though the RIAA must go through the long approach of obtaining user's identification for a suspect IP, this has certainly not slowed them down. They have filed a further 531 copyright infringement suits against individuals on Tuesday which amounts to over 1,000 lawsuits since the start of this year. This is over double that of the last four months of 2003.
Since the NPD announced a new rise in Kazaa usage, the RIAA has got more anxious in sending out their warning. They claim that legal services such as Apple's iTunes are facing unfair competition with businesses based on illegal file sharing services.
With the more expensive filing suits in court, settlements this round will likely be much more than the $ 3,000 average last year. At least 381 people have agreed to settle since the RIAA began issuing lawsuits against individuals which is up from 233 mid-January. Even the Canadian Recording Industry Association is now trying out the RIAA's approach by seeking court orders of 29 file swappers accused of copyright infringement.
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As with the last round of suits, filed in early January, the latest wave comes without names attached. Under a legal ruling handed down last year , the RIAA must file suits in court before it can approach Internet service providers (ISPs) for information linking alleged file-swapping evidence to the subscriber names on a given ISP account. That hasn't stopped the group's legal machine from churning out evidence of copyright infringement, however. With the total number of people sued now approaching 1,500 , the trade association says its legal action continues to be necessary to protect the growth of services like Apple Computer's iTunes and other authorized music outlets. "Legal online music services...shouldn't have to compete with businesses based on illegal downloading," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "That's why we are sending a clear message that downloading or 'sharing' music from a peer-to-peer network without authorization is illegal, it can have consequences and it undermines the creative future of music itself." Read the full source article here. |
Despite the RIAA's claim of legal services facing unfair competition with free P2P services, there are many reasons which may make a user choose either one. Users that use legal services are guaranteed properly encoded and labelled music, fair size selection, decent download speeds as well as complete skip free audio. The only few advantages with free P2P other than the price is having the audio in MP3 format, free of DRM restrictions and having a good variety of music to choose from. The cost here is having to re-downlaod tracks over and over to get a glitch free high quality copy.
Source: CNET News - The Net
