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P2P scam site settles with FTC

30 May 2006 8:42 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 4 comments

A man who was advertising subscription to his site as a way of downloading music without having to face litigation has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Los Angeles man Cashier Myricks settled the deception charges brought against him after the FTC alleged his site deceived users into thinking that his referral or tutorial conferred a license to share copyrighted files. Mp3downloadcity.com contained nothing more than tutorials to use free P2P software.

Myricks was charging $24.95 for access to his tutorial which he claimed would make file sharing "100 per cent legal". The FTC filed the suit against Myricks in September 2005 and the settlement now brings an end to the legal action. As part of the settlement, Myricks must return the more than $15k the FTC alleged he received to 611 individuals he had duped into forking out the cash.

From now on he must also inform users that "using P2P programs to download copyrighted music, movies, games, or other material without a license from the copyright holder can subject you to lawsuits, fines, and even criminal prosecution." He is barred from making future misrepresentations about the legality of any computer product also.

The Internet is full of similar sites that claim users will be able to download 1000's of movies and games and millions of MP3s for either a once of payment, or sometimes even a subscription fee. Many of these sites often turn out to either contain guides to using P2P services, to using Newsgroups (and might also provide a low quality news server) or a list of public FTP sites gotten from IRC channels and/or public/private BitTorrent trackers.

Source:
The Register

Permalink to this article

U.S. court slaps 'legal' music download site (20 October 2005)

Scam music download sites may be targeted (8 March 2005)

Federal Trade Commission spotlights proposals on P2P risks (8 December 2004)

P2P networks to work against child porn (6 May 2004)

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Discuss this article!
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 30 May 2006 14:00
Thats really funny i was just answering a thread before about a website asking for subscription payment to get access to free PS2 games to download and now I read this. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/348033 Well to me this guy got off pretty well just having to pay back what he got and hadn't really got fined :) [ + quote]
flyingv (Member) 30 May 2006 14:45
Yep. Sounds like he made out like a bandit, so to speak. [ + quote]
Jasper44 (Member) 30 May 2006 18:08
WOW, there are 611 really stupid people out there. [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 31 May 2006 10:33
Cashier Myricks? Cashier? How appropriate. [ + quote]