RIAA Fights to Avoid Attorney Fees in Dismissed Piracy Lawsuit
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The Recording Industry Association of America opposes a judge's recommendation that it reimburse Tanya Andersen for legal defense bills she incurred to fight piracy charges that were dropped for lack of evidence. Andersen's defense bills could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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from the this-isn&#39;ta-court-of-justice,-son,-this-is-a-court-of-law dept. Iphtashu Fitz writes &quot;The Associated Press recently reviewed many of the copyright infringement lawsuits that the RIAA filed against
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Money meets mouth on file-sharing legislation threats ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - One of the last of the popular P-to-P (peer-to-peer) music sharing sites has been defeated, with eDonkeyâs agreement to settle its copyright infringement case with the record industry. In documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, eDonkey founders and parent company MetaMachine Inc. said theyâll pay US$30 million to record companies to settle the case. They also agreed to refrain from conducting any further business that might involve copying, distributing or otherwise infringing copyrighted works. The settlement follows just more than a month after Sharman Networks Ltd., developer of the file-sharing software Kazaa, said it would pay the entertainment industry $100 million to settle similar lawsuits. Other file-sharing companies to succumb include Grokster Ltd., which shut down last year after losing a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The eDonkey Web site now features a statement, similar to one on the Grokster site, informing visitors that illegal downloaders can be prosecuted and ominously warning visitors that they arenât anonymous by displaying and claiming to log their IP address. The eDonkey settlement will be paid to Arista Records LLC, Atlantic Recording Corp., Capitol Records Inc., Elektra Entertainment Group Inc., Sony BMG Music Entertainment and UMG Recordings Inc. Lime Wire LLC is one of few the remaining popular file-sharing software companies although in August a group of record companies filed a suit against it in the U.S. asking for damages that could amount to as much as $476 million. Late last year, eDonkeyâs founder predicted the demise of the file-sharing industry. During a speech in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he warned that U.S. P-to-P companies would all cease to exist because they would lack the resources to defend themselves against the record companies under the ruling he characterized as vague in the Grokster suit. The record companies and movie studios have spent the last couple years carrying out attacks against the creators of file-sharing software, contending they should be held liable for copyright infringement by their users. The file-sharing software developers have largely failed in their arguments that they warn users not to illegally transfer materials and so shouldn't be held responsible for how people use their products. REFERENCES: Kazaa settles with record industry, Jul. 27, 2006Grokster shuttered in court settlement, Nov. 7, 2005US P-to-P companies will disappear, executive says, Sep. 30, 2005
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EMI forces IFPI merger discussions - report Prepare to peel off your bumper stickers - the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) may disappear in a merger of trade groups, Variety reports.â¦
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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has revived its long-running crackdown on file-swapping through legal action, suing 750 alleged filing copyright infrigement suits again
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Officials with the Grokster  file-trading network have agreed to pay $500,000 to settle  charges they operated a separate music download service without  permission, a recording-industry trade group said on Monday.
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The great debate over file-sharing rages on, with some, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation maintaining that copyright law doesn&#39;t matter anymore.
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(InfoWorld) - Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay $1.5 million in penalties to settle lawsuits with two U.S. states over its controversial use of copy protection software. The settlements with the California and Texas attorneys general were announced Tuesday, seven months after theÂ music giant settled a class-action lawsuit in the matter. Sony's trouble began in late 2005, when a computer science researcher disclosed that Sony's had beenÂ shipping CDs with a copy protection program that used dangerous "rootkit" techniquesÂ to cloak itself after installation. Sony licensed this software from First 4 Internet Ltd., based in Banbury, U.K., but problems were also found with a second copy protection program used by Sony. That software, called Media Max, was developed by SunnComm International Inc. of Phoenix. Until Tuesday, Texas had been the only state with an outstanding lawsuit related to the rootkit fiasco, but other state's attorneys general and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had also been looking into the matter, according to Jeff McGrath, deputy district attorney, with Los Angeles County, which participated in the California lawsuit. Sony has now reached tentative settlements with more than a dozen other states, including Massachusetts and Nebraska, as well as the FTC, McGrath said. The FTC declined to comment on the matter. The California lawsuit was both filed and settled on Tuesday. Sony's rootkit software shipped on an estimated 15 million CDs, bundled with music from artists such as Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion and Earl Scruggs. Consumers were offered refunds as part of the May class-action agreement, but Tuesday's settlements take additional steps by compensating them for damages caused by the rootkit code and "ensuring that this type of thing will not happen again," McGrath said. California and Texas consumers who believe that their computers were damaged by Sony's software can receive up to $175 to cover repair costs. The agreements also force Sony to submit any software it ships with music CDs to third-party audits for the next five years. Sony has created a Web site to address its rootkit settlement. That site is eventually expected to include instructions for consumers seeking refunds for their PC repairs. These refunds will, for example, compensate users who had their CD drives trashed when AOL's antispyware software tried to remove the First 4 files, said Paco Felici, a spokesman with the Texas Attorney General's office. Since the rootkit fiasco, Sony has stopped shipping digital rights management software with its music CDs. However, if it does add this capability to future CDs, it must make this clear to customers. "They're requiring disclosures to consumers before sale on the CD packaging," said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "I think that's really crucial. Part of the whole background of the rootkit fiasco was that consumers just didn't know what they were getting into." A Sony spokesman declined to comment on investigations by the FTC and other states. "We are pleased to have reached agreements with the offices of the California and Texas Attorneys General," he said, reading from a statement.
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Chris Gorog is convinced people won&#39;t continue to pay $1 a song for online music. By Evan Agostini, Getty Images. That is despite Apple&#39;s (AAPL) record string
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The RIAA unveils P2PLawsuits.com, a site that allows people turned in by their universities or ISPs for copyright infringement to settle their cases in advance of due process. In Listening Post
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Update: The Recording Industry Association of America purges nasty file-sharing clients' ads from a recent site reportedly planned as part of a new anti-piracy campaign. In Listening Post.
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RIAA continued its effort to end piracy at college campuses with a new round of 'pre-litigation' letters aimed at using the threat of a suit to settle cases out of court.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has set March 29 as the date for oral arguments on whether companies providing peer-to-peer file trading software should be held responsible for copyright infringement committed by users of their products. The arguments are part of a long-playing case pitting a cadre of entertainment industry players against distributors of the Grokster and Morpheus file trading software. The p-to-p companies have already won in district court and again last August when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Grokster, Morpheus distributor StreamCast Networks, and a site operated by StreamCast called Musiccity.com were not liable for copyright violations by their users. The entertainment companies, led by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), decided to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying there are seminal issues at stake. The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion by the end of July.
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A woman in Milwaukee and her ex-boyfriend are under orders to pay thousands to the recording industry. A man in California refinanced his home to pay an &#36;11,000 settlement. A year after it began, the industry's legal campaign against Internet music piracy is inching through the federal courts, producing some unexpected twists.
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Association seeks monetary damages from alleged film pirates.
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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is being given a taste of its own medicine by peer-to-peer (P2P) company Altnet, which has launched a civil suit against the trade body alleging patent infringement.