James Delahunty
18 Nov 2004 21:21
Continuing its campaign against music sharers online, the RIAA has filed another 761 lawsuits against P2P users it alleges to be distributing copyrighted music for free online. Of the 761 people, 25 were college students. This comes just days after the Motion Pictures Association of America filed its first round of lawsuits against P2P users it says have distributed movies freely online to other P2P users. The RIAA claims that the growth of legal music services online has had a positive impact on the swappers actions. "The lawsuits are an essential educational tool," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives."
This is becoming an all too familiar story to us all now and the results never change. Despite these lawsuits, P2P usage will continue to go as steady as it was, or even increase as some studies have shown. The RIAA may also be scared of the potential of anonymous P2P networks that we've seen lately in ANts P2P and Mute which use file-routing and altered search results to protect the privacy of P2P users. The latest RIAA suits brought the total number of file-swappers sued by the recording industry to 6,952.
Source:
News.com