After the RIAA's victory against ISP Verizon Communications, in which the ISP was forced to turn over the names of alleged music pirates, the anti-piracy group is on the hunt again for individuals who illegally download files from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks such as KaZaA.
nuihc and icepax both reported that the RIAA has said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals using P2P software. By doing this the group will expand their anti-piracy fight into millions of homes:
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The RIAA believes the popular peer-to-peer services, which allow users to copy music, movies and other files from each others' hard drives, are partly responsible for a decline in CD sales, and has aggressively sought to shut them down. But until now the industry has shied away from directly suing users, opting instead to send them online warnings and clutter up the networks with dummy files. A recent court ruling makes it easier to track down copyright violators through their Internet providers, and Sherman said investigators would begin to track down hundreds of users who make their digital-music collections available for copying. Lawsuits asking for statutory damages of $ 150,000 per count will likely be filed in six to eight weeks, he said. The industry will not initially target those who do not allow others to copy their music collections, he said. Music fans who wish to avoid legal action should change the settings on their peer-to-peer software to block access to their hard drives, or uninstall the software completely, he said. |
Although the RIAA succeeded in shutting down one of the first P2P networks, Napster, the group suffered a major blow when file-sharing softwares Grokster and Morpheus were declared legal. Read the complete article here.
Source: CNN
