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Riaa sues 531 suspected music pirates { February 17 2004 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48299-2004Feb17.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48299-2004Feb17.html

RIAA Sues 531 Suspected Music Pirates

By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 17, 2004; 3:19 PM


The recording industry continued its legal assault on online music piracy today, suing an additional 531 people it suspects of illegally trading copyrighted music on the Internet.

The lawsuits -- filed in federal courts in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla. and Trenton, N.J. -- bring to 1,000 the number of people the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued this year. The association sued 532 suspected music pirates in January.

Last year, the RIAA filed lawsuits against sued 382 people and reached out-of-court settlements with 233 others.

Illegal downloading and sharing hurts the recording industry and the fledgling legal music download services that are trying to cater to the changing habits of music buyers, said RIAA President Cary Sherman.

"Legal online music services are delivering a high-quality, consumer-friendly experience, and they're attracting new fans," Sherman said in a press release. "But they shouldn't have to compete with businesses based on illegal downloading. 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."

The RIAA maintains that Internet piracy has taken a huge bite out of album sales. Compact disc sales fell from $943 million in 2000 to $803 million in 2002.

Many experts add that the sales drop also is caused by a steady trend toward buying music song-by-song on the Internet, a jump into the future in terms of distribution but also a step backward to the early days of rock 'n' roll when the 45rpm record ruled music sales.

The recording industry's decision to sue suspected music traders is based on a confusing tangle of court rulings. A pair of federal court decisions in February established that file trading networks like Morpheus and Kazaa are legal but that the recording industry could use the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to subpoena Internet service providers for the names of suspected music pirates -- without getting a judge to approve the subpoena.

The RIAA started using the subpoenas last September, forcing many music pirates to settle the charges. It had to stop that tactic after a federal appeals court ruled last December that the association can subpoena the service providers only if it gets a judge's approval first.

This year's lawsuits are "John Doe" suits. In those cases, the recording industry lists hundreds of Internet protocol numbers that can be matched to a service provider's customer. The RIAA asks the service provider for the names once a judge allows the lawsuit to continue.

The RIAA has already begun filing subpoenas based on the cases it filed in January, said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy.

The campaign is designed to send the message that the "sue-the-customer" strategy is here to stay, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"I really question whether this has anything to do with real relief for the record companies other than just a public relations hit," Cohn said.


© 2004 TechNews.com



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