Technology Vault - NewsBytes

Tuesday 25 May, 2004

RIAA continue onslaught by turnitonagain @ 9:22 am

The RIAA announced yesterday that another 493 illegal file sharers were to have lawsuits filed against them. They are using the "John Doe" litigation process, which is the same method that they have been using throughout the start of this year. This is where the name of the defendant is not known at the time of the lawsuit being filed.

In 24 of the John Doe cases that were filed earlier this year, the identities of the file sharers have now been found and named lawsuits have been brought against them. The 24 individuals were offered out of court settlements to settle before the case reached court, but all have refused or ignored this option.

The President of the RIAA, Cary Sherman, had this to say on the ongoing battle with illegal sharers "Our continuing objective is to send a message of deterrence, protect the rights of property owners, and foster environment where the legitimate marketplace, both online and at retail, can flourish."

In my opinion, the RIAA should have kept up with the times in the first place and encouraged legal download sites from the start, rather than looking for draconian ways to stop people. One only has to look at the popularity of the iTunes store and the recent launch of the UK Napster to see how quickly legal downloading has taken hold.

If there is a drop in illegal file sharing, then I think a large percentage of that will be people moving on the legal download sites because of their availability and not because of the lawsuit threat from the RIAA.

Discuss this and other articles