The agreement follows a lawsuit filed last month, accusing
Audiogalaxy of facilitating and encouraging widespread copyright
infringement.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA), it sued as “a last resort step after repeated efforts to
warn the firm of their liability were ignored or resulted in
ineffective attempts to fix the problem.”
The settlement reached allows Audiogalaxy to operate a
"filter-in" system, which requires that for any music available,
the songwriter, music publisher, and/or recording company must
first consent to the use and sharing of the work. The other key
provision of the agreement is for Audiogalaxy to pay the music
publishers and recording industry an undisclosed “substantial sum
based on Audiogalaxy's assets and interest in resolving this case
quickly.”
Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA, said:
"This should serve as a wake-up call to the
other networks that facilitate unauthorised copying. The
responsibility for implementing systems that allow for the
authorised use of copyrighted works rests squarely on the shoulders
of the peer-to-peer network."
Arguably, Audiogalaxy was an easy target for the RIAA. Its
software, which has been downloaded around 30 million times
according to Download.com, is a centralised P2P service. This means
that, like the original Napster service, users must connect to
Audiogalaxy's servers to access other users’ hard drives. By doing
so, Audiogalaxy is in a position to control the activity of users.
Decentralised systems, like the more popular KaZaA service, are not
in a position to exercise such control.
Audiogalaxy has until now enjoyed a reputation for giving access
to music that is less mainstream than that found in the larger
KaZaA network. If its offerings become much more limited due to the
filters, it is likely that its users will simply migrate to other
networks.
KaZaA's popularity took off when Napster introduced similar
filtering systems before Napster ultimately shut down its service.
KaZaA.com claims that its software has been downloaded over 92
million times making it the internet’s most popular P2P
service.
