James Delahunty
30 May 2006 8:42
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