The RIAA launched the offensive against file-swappers involved
in "illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted
music", following a carefully planned summer campaign to tackle the
illegal downloading of copyrighted music over file-sharing networks
such as KaZaA.
The RIAA announced in June that it would be turning its
attention to individual pirates, not just the file-sharing networks
that facilitate file swapping. Since then it has served a flood of
subpoenas under the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA), ordering ISPs to identify targeted individuals.
The 261 cases are only the first among what are expected to be
thousands of legal actions and have taken many defendants by
surprise. The RIAA deliberately did not name the defendants in the
claims, but the media has been hot on the trail. Often the first
notice that a defendant had of the lawsuit was a telephone call
from a journalist.
Charles Dumond from California told News.com of his astonishment
at hearing the accusations from a reporter. He said, "Personally, I
have not done this," adding, "There may be other family members who
do this. But the [internet service provider] bill is in my
name."
This may be a difficulty for the RIAA. They may well be able to
identify the name and address of an ISP account holder, but if that
is a family or company account, then the RIAA may not be able to
identify the person actually involved in the file-sharing
activity.
Another difficulty for the RIAA, at least on the PR front, is
that its first victory has been against a twelve-year-old girl, who
apparently had more than 1,000 songs on her computer, available to
other users of KaZaA's P2P network. Her mother, confronted with the
charge, instantly agreed to settle the action.
Brianna, who lives in New York, issued a statement through the
RIAA saying, "I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and I
don't want to hurt the artists I love."
Grokster boss Wayne Rosso told vnunet.com, "I'm trying to
contact the mother to offer to pay the $2,000 for her out of my own
pocket. I'm disgusted by the RIAA and its extortion tactics".
In what had to be a mixed day for the RIAA, it was then slapped
with a lawsuit of its own – over the "Clean Slate" amnesty it had
announced on Monday. This olive branch for alienated music fans
provides file-swappers with an amnesty from legal action – in
return for a sworn written statement admitting the offence, the
deletion of stored songs, and a promise promising not to do it
again.
Eric Parke, a mortgage executive, has now filed a suit seeking
to halt the amnesty programme, on the basis that it is not a
complete amnesty. Other parties, not affiliated to the RIAA, may
wish to sue file-swappers and, the suit alleges, would be able to
subpoena the RIAA for the information contained in the amnesty
forms.
According to the Wall Street Journal an RIAA spokesman
commented, "No good deed goes unpunished, apparently."
