RIAA files 761 new file-trading lawsuits

November 18, 2004, 03:47 PM —  IDG News Service — 

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed new lawsuits against 761 people who allegedly use peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software to trade music files without permission, the trade group announced Thursday.

The lawsuits included users of the eDonkey, Limewire and Kazaa services, as well as 25 people using university Internet connections to distribute music files. American University in Washington, D.C., Boston College, Iowa State University and the University of Massachusetts were among the college networks used by those sued.

The RIAA believes that partnerships between universities and pay-for-music download services have in part come about because of the trade group's legal strategy, RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement. At least 20 U.S. universities signed agreements with pay-for-music services as of August, and more signed agreements since then, according to the RIAA.

"The lawsuits are an essential educational tool," Sherman said in a statement. "They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives."

Since September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 7,000 lawsuits, including more than 2,200 lawsuits announced since Oct. 1, against alleged file traders.

The new RIAA lawsuits come on the heels of another group of lawsuits announced this week by the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA). The undisclosed number of MPAA lawsuits were aimed at P-to-P users who allegedly distributed movies without permission.

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace