RIAA sends letters to P2P services

RIAA sends letters to P2P services
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sent cease and desist letters to seven P2P companies demanding that they halt their "practice of encouraging users to illegally distribute copyrighted material". This is the first action taken by the group which represents major record companies since the Grokster decision earlier this year in which the Supreme Court ruled that operators of P2P services could be held liable for copyright infringement by third parties under some circumstances.

For example a company that encouraged or incited copyright infringement using its services could be held liable for the actions of third-parties. "Companies situated similarly to Grokster have been given ample opportunity to do the right thing," a RIAA spokesperson said. "Those businesses that continue to knowingly operate on the wrong side of that line do so at their own risk."



The RIAA refused to name the companies that have received letters. "We demand that you immediately cease-and-desist from enabling and inducing the infringement of RIAA member sound recordings. If you wish to discuss pre-litigation resolution of these claims against you, please contact us immediately." the RIAA states in a copy of a letter that News.com managed to obtain.

The letter also goes on to say that the Grokster decision applies equally to this certain company and certain individuals at the company. BearShare, WinMX and LimeWire were identified in a Wall Street Journal story as recipients of the letters but none have commented. So now the entertainment industry after having some success from the Supreme Court (although not exactly what it had hoped for) appears to be intending to see just how much it can squeeze from the Grokster ruling.

Many experts feared that after the ruling, entertainment companies would abuse the ruling.

Source:
ZDNet


Written by: James Delahunty @ 15 Sep 2005 12:26
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  • 26 comments
  • philipman

    Damn RIAA, wish they would just give up.

    15.9.2005 12:33 #1

  • pieman

    Ive sent a letter to my neighbour about his dog shitting on my drive....The dog still shits.

    15.9.2005 13:22 #2

  • Daniel_G

    I wish Bin Laden would blow those RIAA b*stards up, instead of killing innocent people ;)

    ...And i'm wondering wether or not the pirate bay has received one of those wonderful letters.....
    *runs off to check it out*

    15.9.2005 13:22 #3

  • Rikoshay

    This is so stupid... Can't those money-leeching b@stards find an alternative solution than harrassing every downloadable program? If they were to actually suceed, where would the madness of their power-hungry dictatorships go? We would have to pay them just to play back a song! It's not like this is the only imaginable crime that is being commited at the time. If they would just drop their retarded pricing to a reasonable minimum so we would not feel like we bit ourselvs in the ass considering how much we payed for the damn thing, we MIGHT consider it. I just want to see some of these P2P programs write to the RIAA and the MPAA, telling them to stop ripping us off and we'll stop ripping them off.

    15.9.2005 13:33 #4

  • p4_tt

    S1 should send the damn RIAA a cease and desist demanding that they halt their suing actions, man you would think there would be a limit to how many people you can sue ;)

    15.9.2005 13:33 #5

  • Lethal_B

    this news may be a blessing in disguise... it shows that nothing has worked so far and they are desperate, so desperate that they have to go to the p2p clients.

    who cares? by the time they take one p2p to court. another 2 will have developed. and also i think alot of people use bittorrent now. 6 months ago. id have bin effd without my limewire. but now i only go on for the odd song. and im guessing a lot of you use the torrents now aswell. let's see them try to shut that down!

    they are trying to sell a dead horse. we know it, they know it. theyre all minted. we get £1000 of free stuff and as delboy says........
    Quote:everyone's a winner rodney!lol

    15.9.2005 13:57 #6

  • lcarbutt

    I hope they send one to the pirate bay so it gets put up on their legal section
    http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php

    That always makes me laugh

    15.9.2005 14:50 #7

  • nonoitall

    LOL, that post cheered me up pieman. Apparently now the government has four branches - executive, legislative, judicial and RIAA. These creeps have a lot of nerve. Have they even downloaded a LimeWire client recently? If they had they would know that LimeWire places copyright infringement warnings on both their website and embeded in their software and requests that the user obey their country's copyright laws. They complied with the Grokster ruling 100% and still the RIAA is harrassing them. Hopefully one of those P2P companies will counter-sue and drive the RIAA back into hell or at least into bankrupsy. ;)

    15.9.2005 14:53 #8

  • j0j081

    like you guys I hate the RIAA but in this case I don't think they are doing that bad of a thing. Companies who encourage the trading of copyrighted material are playing with fire and deserve a warning. It's stupid to advertise any kind of illegal activity...this isn't like my 13 year old sister being sued for downloading the newest Killers song.

    15.9.2005 15:45 #9

  • diabolos

    Thats the point, nothing wrong is being done, just enabled. Its like saying guns are bad. People that sell guns arn't bad. People that fire guns arn't bad. People that kill people are bad.

    P2P just needs to get its act together and come up with alternatives that make money. If the P2P comunity (us) does it then I don't see how anyone could have a problem with it (as far as fairness and purity). We cant wait for the Entertainment industry to do it for us (they don't like to share). I wouldn't mind paying ($.$$) a little a month for quality service and a seemingly infinite catalog of everything! I'm sick of speratic downloads! Sometimes fast sometimes slow, ya know.

    15.9.2005 19:08 #10

  • Chris1000

    j0j081, the problem with these lawsuits or C&D letters is that all of the services that they have been sent to, have disclaimers saying that you should not use their services for distributing copyrighted material that you do not own the copyrights.
    The RIAA is going after places that are IN FULL AGREEMENT with what was said in Grokster v. US, that would keep p2p developers from being sued in court.
    They are abusing the justice system now, because there is NO way for them to control what is being shared on their networks, and that is what these lawsuits are really about.
    If they use a name-filtering system, well, the only thing they have to do to get around that is to name their file something other than it actually is.
    For hash-based systems, the only thing you would have to do is zip a file and add a blank file or two in order to change the hash value.

    Some people will say that they should stop using and distributing these products because of this. Okay, then lets stop using TCP/IP, because it has been used to infringe on copyright in the past. Let's stop distributing FTP software because of that (would go over real well with Microsoft and others, since they use FTP to transfer files to your computer).

    They are trying to put unreasonable limits on the technology and what people can use them for, not because they are worried about piracy, but because they are worried that people will start making their own home movies that are comparable to Hollywood's and distribute them on p2p, with less money need by the people distributing and people will flock to watch those home-made movies.

    15.9.2005 20:23 #11

  • sick_unit

    Sorry RIAA, P2P will live on forever!!
    It will bever be stopped. As one gets shut down another opens, that just the way it is.

    16.9.2005 02:29 #12

  • weazel200

    RIAA can go to hell. One day it will be too much for them and they will surrender to us

    16.9.2005 02:43 #13

  • Lethal_B

    @Icarbutt

    LMAO those replies are soooo funi lol how many people get the chance to tell Dreamworks to go fck themselves!! :P

    16.9.2005 04:00 #14

  • akkuma

    And so it begins!!

    16.9.2005 04:33 #15

  • connolly

    From the RIAA website-

    "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) takes an uncompromising stand against censorship and for the First Amendment rights of all artists to create freely."

    Hmmm. Stand against censorship!!!!

    16.9.2005 07:20 #16

  • neo1000

    The church should defend us,after all christ said we shall share.

    16.9.2005 07:56 #17

  • dbaston

    i feel sorry for this woman who is been trying to get sued by the bullys of the recording industry i live in england and from the birth of cds they have been over priced compaired to other countries.Powers that be over here have said in the past that the brits were getting a raw deal for the cd albums so it now has backfired on they.As for some of these companys that is trying to get the p2ps shut down and the like if they had not produced dvd recorders and cd rewriters and the media to use to copy the material that they are worried about perhaps it would not have happened as quick as it has KEEP THE P2Ps GOING THEY ARE DOING A GRAND JOB

    16.9.2005 09:35 #18

  • MALHodges

    .

    16.9.2005 15:35 #19

  • tin23uk

    what about microsoft do they not make media player which comes pre installed on most computers and is able to rip tracks from cd's. maybe the RIAA should send them a letter for giving us free software to rip and share music.

    oh my bad they wouldnt get very far trying to sue mr gates with the lawyers he can afford.

    16.9.2005 17:14 #20

  • finetco

    Pieman makes a valid point...The RIAA is really barking real loud and using public scare tactics and making making a loud protest...But it will be to no avail in the end. It will just make people more determined to take from them. In fact people who may not have done it in the past may now do it all the more so just on principle. Punish the bullies. Many more will take the place of these 7 companies then they will have to deal with 13 then 40 then 400 till it would eat up their profits just litigating. They just should have left the 7 well enough alone.

    16.9.2005 21:25 #21

  • thecrock

    Has anybody got shop bought CD's that are now unplayable because of the disc's label degrading, peeling, bubbling and coming away from the cd? Did anybody rush out and try to get their money back or get replacement's for these INDESTRUCTIBLE albums? Did the record companies offer to replace these faulty cd's? I recently looked at the beatles blue double album and it's suffering from serious degradation on both disc's(i'ts only been played 3 or 4 times) do you think i'll get my 20 pounds back? Yeah right! Fuck em.

    17.9.2005 02:00 #22

  • weazel200

    RIAA only care about rich folks when it comes to music sales because they know they can sue the pants off people who download. Either way they get their moneys worth.

    17.9.2005 05:04 #23

  • IHoe

    this crap has been going on long enough!!!! I used to record off the f.....ing radio when a new Beatles song would come out! This is stupid! If they didn't want to use the technology why put it out there in the first place! Don't sell the internet to computer users...... don't sell RECORDERS of any kind..... soon BIG BROTHER will charge you for taking a dump!!!! ohhhhhhhh they already do DO!! Sh.t when will this nonsense end?

    17.9.2005 19:12 #24

  • Brutalsun

    The movies they are trying to defend suck anyways, same with the music. I try and I buy, And when i buy I burn as many as I wish because i hashed out the 20 dollars for that .02 cent piece of shite. I don't distribute to the world I don't make a profit and neither do the musicians, they make all of their money ON TOUR, The RIAA makes it sound like we are stealing money away from "starving musicians" tucked safely away in thier palaces. SCREW YOU RIAA

    18.9.2005 09:08 #25

  • vudoo

    I only hope that some rich and smart Blind person sues the pants off the RIAA for discrimmination. See not every song is available on so called legal music services. I think that rich blind person should sue the RIAA 800 million dollars for every song that is not available on the legal services and he or she would have every right to because a Blind person can not read the CD labels nor could they play a CD for that matter cuz they would not know which track is where. And Totally Blind people use text to speach which is available on their computers to access p2p. So therefore takeing away p2p is discrimmination against the Blind and that is a federal offence now isn't it? I mean an employer has to watch what he or she does why not the RIAA? Come on NFB I mean you Blind people can sit in the front of a run way because the airlines won't let you sit where ever you want so now you NFBers should get smart and get rich fast while the pot is still hot. Imagine how many unemployed Blind people $800 Million/Song could support. I love the idea and would love to start that. I bet the RIAA would back off and cry if that were to actually take place. But americans are too lazy to even try so its just a dream.

    18.9.2005 22:58 #26

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