RIAA sues 261 music uploaders

The Recording Industry Association of America Inc. (RIAA) announced Monday that it has filed civil lawsuits against 261 people across the U.S. and will seek thousands of dollars in damages from the defendants, who have each allegedly uploaded an average of 1,000 songs to peer-to-peer networks. At the same time, the RIAA offered amnesty to music sharers who promise to stop uploading or downloading copyrighted songs.

The 261 lawsuits, the first lawsuits filed by the RIAA against peer-to-peer (P-to-P) users, have been filed across the U.S., and the RIAA will look for monetary settlements in most cases, said Cary Sherman, RIAA president. The RIAA has sent about 1,500 subpoenas seeking the names of music sharers, and it has already settled with a handful of file sharers for around US$3,000 each, but because the RIAA has taken the next step of filing lawsuits, it will likely seek more damages in these 261 lawsuits, Sherman said.

The lawsuits were filed against users of several P-to-P services, including Kazaa, Gnutella and Grokster, Sherman said, and the RIAA is planning more lawsuits against users of other P-to-P services. "There will be subsequent waves of litigation," he promised.

The lawsuits target music uploaders in an attempt to cut off the source of much of the unauthorized music available on P-to-P services, Sherman said. In April, the RIAA filed lawsuits against four students who allegedly set up file-trading networks on university campuses, but this is the first time the RIAA has sued individual members of P-to-P services.

"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," added Sherman, who was joined by a dozen songwriters and music executives in a telephone press conference. "But when you are being victimized by illegal activity, there comes a time when you have to stand up and take appropriate action."

Sharman Networks Ltd., the owner of the Kazaa P-to-P service, didn't have an immediate comment on the lawsuits.

In the RIAA's file-sharing amnesty program, called the "Clean Slate Program," P-to-P users who haven't yet been investigated by the RIAA can take all the copyrighted music files off their computers and sign an affidavit promising not to share unauthorized music again. In exchange, the RIAA will promise not to prosecute those people.

Asked why file traders would want to give their names to the RIAA, Sherman said the amnesty program offers them a clean slate for past file-trading activities.

"We have basically offered this amnesty program because we were contacted by people who wanted the assurance, who wanted the comfort of knowing that they wouldn't be subject to a lawsuit for their past behavior," Sherman said. "We wanted to offer those people a mechanism to gain that comfort. But if people would prefer to simply stop engaging in the illegal activity, we certainly encourage that."

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