Dave Horvath
16 Aug 2007 19:59
Some time ago, the RIAA had filed suit against Patti Santangelo and her two children Michelle and Robert for allegedly illegally downloading copyrighted music from the Internet. Patti, the mother, had managed to escape the lawsuit without any damages, however her children are still locked in battle with the recording industry. The lawyer of these two children has now issued a claim to bring Sharman Networks, the creator of famed P2P application KaZaA and also, AOL, which provides internet service for the Santangelo family.
The motion was filed yesterday seeking permission to name Sharman Networks and AOL as third-party defendants, effectively placing liability on these two companies for any harm that has been done to the recording industry. Sharman's application KaZaA was allegedly used by Michelle and Robert to download copyrighted material but the Santangelo's lawyer claims that KaZaA "operates in the background of one's computer", while "recklessly disregarding copyright law". He contined to claim that KaZaA uses these tactics to trap "unsuspecting uses into unintended sharing". Also according to the motion, KaZaA is alleged to have blocked all warnings from the RIAA about copyright infringement. Finally, the proposed summons dictates that Sharman had settled for over $100 million with the RIAA but failed to take Sharman's "other victims" int account during the settlement. These victims of course are users who weren't aware that their music was eing shared over the network because of the reasons above.
AOL is also wanting to be named for "reckless endangerment of children," among other things. The summons states that AOL was aware that there is illegal P2P traffic going across their network and it had the ability to prevent children from accessing these files over the P2P network. However, they state AOL failed to take any action against illegal activities across their network.
Whether or not this is a PROPER course of action to take or not, its definitely going to be an expensive case for the RIAA to continue to pursue should these other parties become named on the lawsuit.
Source:
ARS Technica