NEW YORK (AFP) - A powerful trade group that represents Universal Music Group and Sony Music among others said that it had filed 80 lawsuits across the US targetting individuals who allegedly engaged in online music piracy.

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) (RIAA) said in a statement it filed the lawsuits Thursday after lodging over 200 complaints in September.

The RIAA said it was targeting "egregious file sharers, those, on average, distributing 1,000 copyrighted music files for millions of strangers on the Internet to copy for free."

The trade group, which also represents the likes of Warner Music, EMI and BMG, said it had received 124 responses to the notifications it sent out in September.

The respondants had expressed a desire to settle with the RIAA, it said.

The popularity of online file swapping, whereby people copy and swap music tracks over the Internet, appears to be waning.

Ratings group Nielsen Netratings reported recently that popular file-sharing group KaZaA had witnessed a 41 percent drop in usage since late June and that weekly visitors to its site had fallen to 3.9 million from 6.5 million.

The RIAA said it had already settled in principle with 156 individuals.

'The popularity of online file swapping, whereby people copy and swap music tracks over the Internet, appears to be waning.'

What a lie. People are either going to other networks or being more careful. Dream on.

my wish...

for all the people suied by the RIAA to form a lynch-mob, walk into the RIAA building, and proceed to beat the living crap out of everybody.

my 2 cents.

Warning: Bullsh!t Alert!

Proceed with caution, before wading in any deeper hip boots are highly recommended!

"The popularity of online file swapping, whereby people copy and swap music tracks over the Internet, appears to be waning.

Ratings group Nielsen Netratings reported recently that popular file-sharing group KaZaA had witnessed a 41 percent drop in usage since late June and that weekly visitors to its site had fallen to 3.9 million from 6.5 million. "

What a bunch of garbage! I don't see how they can say that and still keep a straight face. It would make me laugh out loud if I had to try to say that. As of October 30, 2003 - 17:00 est there were:

FastTrack 3,575,252
eDonkey 1,300,103
iMesh 1,191,750
Overnet 754,891
MP2P 263,213
DirectConnect 155,208
Gnutella 116,640
Ares 32,587
Filetopia 3,288
-------------------------
9 networks: 7,392,932

Actively online according to my calculator!

And notice this does not include the users that are on Kazaa or Winmx so a safe guesstimate would be easily over 10,000,000 users thumbing their noses at the evil empire...

I guess this is like the riaa version of Project Bluebook. The ufos were all either swamp gas or the planet Venus.

So it goes with the riaa that the users fall short of any meaningful numbers under closer scrutiny! Must be just weather inversions on the routers!

lmao!!!

I happen to have it on good authority that:\\"egregious file sharers, those, on average, distributing 1,000 copyrighted music files for millions of strangers on the Internet to copy for free."

Is not true. They only look for the total number of files. Not whether or not they are music files or any other kind.

*** riaa can't count ***

What a surprise? Here's another example of riaa fun with numbers. It appears that their calculators are a battery short of a full charge...

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=284

Cant anybody Counter Sue the RIAA? In most cases its like recording off the radio! Or Unrelesed Songs Or Songs that the Record Co have took out of print from the 1980's 90's ?

Hrm.. if what raoulduke said is true.. someone (brave) should go on kazaa sharing 1,000 images and 5 legal mp3s. See if they can get themselves sued by the RIAA.. and then fight the lawsuit… the best way to fight these tactics is to show how inherently flawed they are.

*ahem* Someone call for a patsy?

I don't know if I have that many .jpg's or not, but I have an awful lot of free time on my hands, and LOVE to stir up sh!t...

i might volunteer for that. What you could do is fill ur shared folder with lots of .txt files that have no content named after a song.

Just share your internet browser cache like the leeches already do with 1 ahem 'real tune.'!

Presto 1000+ files at your finger tips

Actually take the 202-775-0101 song and rename it to something like Britney, Jlo, 50cent, etc. just to make it interesting...

DJMIX1970, The RIAA and artists (Madonna) posted bogus files named after songs and didn't sue themselves.

Give the file the name of as song title, pick a single line of the lyric, write a sentence or paragraph giving your interpretation of the lyric (fair use and all) flood your shared folder with these, your vacation pics, and 10-20 "legal to share" files from indie artists.

Don't settle. Don't settle, don't settle.

Put your collection of songs ripped from your CDs into another directory.

Make sure your legal council is tech savy. He will need to prove to the court that the directory you designate as shared didn't/ couldn't access the ripped MP3 files.

Once proven innocent, file a counter suit in civil court for anguish, distress, time lost, harassment, and slander. Ask for compensation set at the RIAA value of 150,000 per song plus punitive damages.

After winning this, go criminal court and get the RIAA for terrorist hacking of your computer.

OR

File a civil suit on the same flimsy grounds they sued you for, " good faith suspicion"
*off topic rant Good faith suspicion? How oxymoronic. Big emphasis on MORONIC end rant* get the court clerk to sign a subpoena and sue them. It wouldn't be hard to do since the previous court case found you innocent. Get them for infringing your copyrights. You might not get 150,000 for each of your photos, that amount is set by the ASMP and other photo trade groups.

Make it worth the time, have the indie artist whoes songs you have put up something saying these files are free to download and distribute by anyone except RIAA spies seeking info against p2p users and trying to sue them. Then the indie artist can sue the RIAA for infringement

That would send a clear message to the RIAA, we've had enough, and your own underhanded tactics can be used against you.

For the tech savy crowd, can someone set a packet sniffing device to find the port scans and IP addresses? If a known RIAA spy IP hits and monitors your computer, you could still lauch the whole good faith suspicion of infriging thing against the RIAA.

And now the matter of financing this. Can we set up a boycott-riaa defence fund just for this purpose? What would be the cost of 3-4 big trials? (2 trials and 2 appeals) What needs to be done to prepare for this?

"Give the file the name of as song title, pick a single line of the lyric, write a sentence or paragraph giving your interpretation of the lyric (fair use and all) flood your shared folder with these, your vacation pics, and 10-20 "legal to share" files from indie artists. "

darknite9 I have been doing exactly that since June when the noise about the lawsuits started.

I suggest everyone here do this to some degree.

A good source is the latest 10 ten movies for the week and top 20 songs as posted on about a gazillion web sites. So once a week just rename them to something popular unless of course the existing filename is still in demand.

For example Gigli & Hulk didn't make it to the next weekend. LOL

Gigli -lol...I remember seeing a trailer for that, shook my head in the threater,
who in the world would pay money to see that load ofn crap?

Is this J-Lo's singing as bad as her acting>?

fyi...
kazaa is on the fasttrack network

as of this moment, I am sharing 3116 files, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS LEGAL - what's more, a majority of them are mp3 sound files!

I have collected thousands of archived recordings made before the copyright laws were enacted in 1923 (ragtime, early jazz, and big band); hundreds of recordings of public performances of pre-1923 compositions (classical, marches, and more ragtime); dozens of public speeches by Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Ralph Nader; and a few hundred songs released into the public domain by modern bands just looking to get their sound out. Oh, and don't forget about Tenacious D!

To tell you the truth, I never had any interest in old music and indie bands until the RIAA reared its evil head - now I've discovered how much great stuff has been hidden behind the wall of crass commercial crap! Thank you, RIAA morons, for helping to turn a generation away from your crap-spewing machine, and towards great classics and music made with real heart!