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(April 1, 2006) - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said it has filed 67 lawsuits against alleged message boards yesterday, charging the users with "egregious" copyright infringement potentially worth millions of dollars.
The newest barrage of lawsuits now seeks damages against message board communities, where its hundreds, if not thousands of members often post and swap live sets of artists, as well as single tracks.
These lawsuits are the next wave of what ultimately could be "hundreds more" lawsuits filed over the next few months.
"Our goal is not to be vindictive or punitive," said RIAA President Cary Sherman. "It is simply to get message boards stop allowing their users to post and share music that does not belong to them."
The lawsuits mark the first time that copyright laws have been used on a mass scale against message boards. While individual users have often been the target of lawsuits in the past, the RIAA feels that message boards wouldn't be at the mercy of any lawsuits, thus allowing and often encouraging its members to post music for downloading.
The RIAA said that's the point it's underlining with the unprecedented legal action. From the rise of Napster until today, tens of millions of people have traded songs, sets, and software online through such places.
The slew of suits will put a serious price tag on those actions for the first time. Under copyright law, violators can be held liable for up to $150,000 per violation--a measure that could result in stunningly high damage figures for some of the defendants in this round of suits. According to the RIAA, most of the people sued yesterday were running large-scale message baords with memberships in the thousands.
Each suit is being filed with information advising defendants whom to contact if they want a settlement.
Attorneys not involved in the dispute say the defendants will be hard-pressed to make a convincing case if the RIAA's evidence holds up in court. The industry trade group has collected long lists of posts in the boards, traced those files and used subpoenas to link that address to a specific Internet account.
Copyright law forbids distributing unauthorized copies of protected works, as well as actually making unauthorized copies. People who have shared considerable amounts of copyrighted files on message boards are likely to be seen as distributors, many attorneys say.
"This will be an uphill battle for anyone to defend," said Evan Cox, an intellectual property attorney with Covington and Burling in San Francisco. "When people allow that many files to be made available and allow that to be exposed to the Internet, it's a pretty sure thing that they're distributing those copies."
Sherman was hard pressed to name any of the defendants in the lawsuits, but after much prodding, admitted that one of the defendants is Mercuryserver.
Alongside the lawsuits, the RIAA also released details of an online amnesty campaign, offering worried file swappers a provisional shield against being sued if they turn themselves in before a suit is filed.
Under the "Clean Slate" program, file swappers must destroy any copies of copyrighted works they have downloaded from services such as Kazaa, and sign a notarized affidavit pledging never to trade copyrighted works online again.
Anybody who signs and returns the document will not be targeted by the RIAA based on past infringement, Sherman said. However, if their names come up in future file-swapping sweeps, any amnesty seekers could be liable for potentially higher damages based on "willful infringement."
The group said it would not use the information gathered for marketing purposes or share it with any other group of copyright holders. Critics such as the EFF's von Lohmann dismissed the assurances, saying that the RIAA's privacy policy allowed the information to be shared if "required by law," a clause which could allow groups such as music publishers or Hollywood studios to subpoena the information from the RIAA to use in their own lawsuits.
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Have a happy April Fools.
The newest barrage of lawsuits now seeks damages against message board communities, where its hundreds, if not thousands of members often post and swap live sets of artists, as well as single tracks.
These lawsuits are the next wave of what ultimately could be "hundreds more" lawsuits filed over the next few months.
"Our goal is not to be vindictive or punitive," said RIAA President Cary Sherman. "It is simply to get message boards stop allowing their users to post and share music that does not belong to them."
The lawsuits mark the first time that copyright laws have been used on a mass scale against message boards. While individual users have often been the target of lawsuits in the past, the RIAA feels that message boards wouldn't be at the mercy of any lawsuits, thus allowing and often encouraging its members to post music for downloading.
The RIAA said that's the point it's underlining with the unprecedented legal action. From the rise of Napster until today, tens of millions of people have traded songs, sets, and software online through such places.
The slew of suits will put a serious price tag on those actions for the first time. Under copyright law, violators can be held liable for up to $150,000 per violation--a measure that could result in stunningly high damage figures for some of the defendants in this round of suits. According to the RIAA, most of the people sued yesterday were running large-scale message baords with memberships in the thousands.
Each suit is being filed with information advising defendants whom to contact if they want a settlement.
Attorneys not involved in the dispute say the defendants will be hard-pressed to make a convincing case if the RIAA's evidence holds up in court. The industry trade group has collected long lists of posts in the boards, traced those files and used subpoenas to link that address to a specific Internet account.
Copyright law forbids distributing unauthorized copies of protected works, as well as actually making unauthorized copies. People who have shared considerable amounts of copyrighted files on message boards are likely to be seen as distributors, many attorneys say.
"This will be an uphill battle for anyone to defend," said Evan Cox, an intellectual property attorney with Covington and Burling in San Francisco. "When people allow that many files to be made available and allow that to be exposed to the Internet, it's a pretty sure thing that they're distributing those copies."
Sherman was hard pressed to name any of the defendants in the lawsuits, but after much prodding, admitted that one of the defendants is Mercuryserver.
Alongside the lawsuits, the RIAA also released details of an online amnesty campaign, offering worried file swappers a provisional shield against being sued if they turn themselves in before a suit is filed.
Under the "Clean Slate" program, file swappers must destroy any copies of copyrighted works they have downloaded from services such as Kazaa, and sign a notarized affidavit pledging never to trade copyrighted works online again.
Anybody who signs and returns the document will not be targeted by the RIAA based on past infringement, Sherman said. However, if their names come up in future file-swapping sweeps, any amnesty seekers could be liable for potentially higher damages based on "willful infringement."
The group said it would not use the information gathered for marketing purposes or share it with any other group of copyright holders. Critics such as the EFF's von Lohmann dismissed the assurances, saying that the RIAA's privacy policy allowed the information to be shared if "required by law," a clause which could allow groups such as music publishers or Hollywood studios to subpoena the information from the RIAA to use in their own lawsuits.
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Have a happy April Fools.
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