The 750 suits come just a few days after Internet researchers released a study that found peer-to-peer traffic had remained constant or risen up to the early days of 2004, despite the pressure of recording industry lawsuits.
But the RIAA said its lawsuits were helping build a foundation for the growth in authorized music services such as iTunes, Napster and others.
"In order for legitimate services to continue their growth, we cannot ignore those who take and distribute music illegally," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "There must be consequences to breaking the law, or illegal downloading will cripple the music community's ability to support itself now or invest in the future."
The music labels' trade association is a little more than a year into its strategy of suing individual file-swappers for copyright infringement, a campaign it hopes will sharply curtail the rate of MP3-swapping on networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey.
The lawsuits have dramatically raised awareness of the legal problems with trading copyrighted files online, and some reports have found steep decreases in the number of people trading music.
A recent study by NPD MusicWatch Digital found that the proportion of MP3 files on people's hard drives, as compared to music formats used by Microsoft or Apple Computer software, was falling. Analysts said that people were still downloading MP3s quickly, but were deleting them even faster from their hard drives--possibly a sign of fear over the record industry lawsuits.
The recent peer-to-peer study was written by researchers at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the University of California, San Diego, along with several other universities. It found that a full analysis of peer-to-peer traffic, including protocols that masked themselves as Web traffic or were otherwise difficult to find, found that aggregate file-swapping traffic had not declined between August 2002 and January 2004.
"We find that, if measured accurately, P2P traffic has never declined," the researchers wrote. "Indeed, we have never seen the proportion of P2P traffic (on networks) decrease over time...in any of our data sources."
But the study did find that traffic patterns had shifted. As earlier reports have shown, the FastTrack network used by Kazaa had decreased substantially, while BitTorrent--a program used widely for very large files such as movies or games, rather than individual songs--had grown considerably.
The RIAA declined to comment on the study.
The latest round of RIAA suits brings the total number of people sued to 6,191. The record industry association also said that it had filed new suits against 213 individuals who had previously been sued as unnamed "John Does," after finding their identities through the litigation process.
The details of that process are still being worked out in some cases. Earlier this month, a court in Philadelphia ruled that the RIAA could issue subpoenas for the identities of anonymous file-swappers, but those people must be notified by their ISP of the RIAA's action within seven days.
In truth, sharing is vital to a healthy society. There is no excuse for not allowing people to share. The real criminals are those who have made sharing illegal: The lawmakers and the people that lobby/bribe/pay them.
I look forward to the day when these people are held accountable for their actions. They are the people destroying our society not the good people who have it in their hearts to share.
In truth, sharing is vital to a healthy society. There is no excuse for not allowing people to share. The real criminals are those who have made sharing illegal: The lawmakers and the people that lobby/bribe/pay them.
I look forward to the day when these people are held accountable for their actions. They are the people destroying our society not the good people who have it in their hearts to share.
as far as the RIAA goes, they'll never learn. the majority of downloaders (such as myself) go buy cds when their budget allows. (normally about one or two a week for me personally) this is just going to drive away consumers more. if enough people believe what the riaa is doing is wrong, the riaa will listen. they will have to, else they will go under. *gasp* we wont have artists like ashley simpson and good charlotte *gasp* lol the riaa needs to either cut cd prices or find something to add to the cd to make it more appealing that consumers cant just download.
as far as the RIAA goes, they'll never learn. the majority of downloaders (such as myself) go buy cds when their budget allows. (normally about one or two a week for me personally) this is just going to drive away consumers more. if enough people believe what the riaa is doing is wrong, the riaa will listen. they will have to, else they will go under. *gasp* we wont have artists like ashley simpson and good charlotte *gasp* lol the riaa needs to either cut cd prices or find something to add to the cd to make it more appealing that consumers cant just download.
Speaking of ashley Simpson... it's pretty pathetic she had such an excuse as ... she had sore throat that day... was that it?
"You and I know that even if I synched on it or not, I'd still get seen by millions, maybe even make a few more fans ... I'll hold my head high and say I think it was silly of me to do it, silly of me to blame the band, I was just so ******* embarrassed... But I don't think it did me much harm, and people will see that soon."
May be she'll sell a few more records coz. of this. Where is today's world going towards anyway? Sigh!
Speaking of ashley Simpson... it's pretty pathetic she had such an excuse as ... she had sore throat that day... was that it?
"You and I know that even if I synched on it or not, I'd still get seen by millions, maybe even make a few more fans ... I'll hold my head high and say I think it was silly of me to do it, silly of me to blame the band, I was just so ******* embarrassed... But I don't think it did me much harm, and people will see that soon."
May be she'll sell a few more records coz. of this. Where is today's world going towards anyway? Sigh!
The RIAA still believes that every downloaded track represents lost revenue to them. Fact is for me and many I know that it was the best way of discovering new music in years. The (corporate) radio sucks, I'm not in college so I don't have a peer network to turn me onto the best new stuff, and as a result I just don't have any motivation to go buy a CD. Of significant note is that this is a first in my 36 years: I used to tape the radio extensively and buy based on that, then I caught the napster bug and discovered tons of new acts (browsing other users with similar taste) as well as downloading tracks to see if I like more than the one single played on the radio. I'm just not going to go buy music blind anymore. I got burned too many times buying crap because there was 1 cool song on the radio, only to find every other song on my $15 CD was horrible.
Of course the RIAA would staunchly oppose any sort of preview based on rental (think movies) or anything else that would allow me to discover in advance whether the CD is worthwhile.
So, screw 'em. I satisfy my music desires with internet radio and leave it at that. No lawsuit for me, no revenue for them.
The RIAA still believes that every downloaded track represents lost revenue to them. Fact is for me and many I know that it was the best way of discovering new music in years. The (corporate) radio sucks, I'm not in college so I don't have a peer network to turn me onto the best new stuff, and as a result I just don't have any motivation to go buy a CD. Of significant note is that this is a first in my 36 years: I used to tape the radio extensively and buy based on that, then I caught the napster bug and discovered tons of new acts (browsing other users with similar taste) as well as downloading tracks to see if I like more than the one single played on the radio. I'm just not going to go buy music blind anymore. I got burned too many times buying crap because there was 1 cool song on the radio, only to find every other song on my $15 CD was horrible.
Of course the RIAA would staunchly oppose any sort of preview based on rental (think movies) or anything else that would allow me to discover in advance whether the CD is worthwhile.
So, screw 'em. I satisfy my music desires with internet radio and leave it at that. No lawsuit for me, no revenue for them.
delighted when Apple UK opened a music download site.
Wanting to keep legal I determined only to download music
from this site. Only when I had spent a fair bit of my hard
earned cash did I realise that the file format cannot be
changed! I therefore cannot download the music to my
little 125MB MP3 player or record the music to a CD to play
elsewhere in the house or car. So once again the music
industry has scored an own goal and I won't be using the
Apple site until the "lock" is taken off the files.
Pete, underpaid, overworked nurse
- iTunes downloads
- by Pete1774 October 30, 2004 11:06 AM PDT
- I bought my Apple iMac a couple of years ago and was
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(12 Comments)delighted when Apple UK opened a music download site.
Wanting to keep legal I determined only to download music
from this site. Only when I had spent a fair bit of my hard
earned cash did I realise that the file format cannot be
changed! I therefore cannot download the music to my
little 125MB MP3 player or record the music to a CD to play
elsewhere in the house or car. So once again the music
industry has scored an own goal and I won't be using the
Apple site until the "lock" is taken off the files.
Pete, underpaid, overworked nurse