Legal Actions!!!
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2003 8:02 pmok... whats going on...
[quote]File-swapping lawsuits: Are you next?
By John Borland
CNET News.com
September 8, 2003, 5:10 PM PT
The Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 alleged file swappers Monday, launching a legal campaign against ordinary Internet users that could ultimately result in thousands of additional lawsuits.
But are you at risk?
If you or a family member have used Kazaa or any other file-swapping application recently and have left your computer open to the Net, the answer is possibly--although the odds of being singled out among an estimated 60 million people using peer-to-peer software remain small. If you've kept thousands of songs in the file you're sharing with other file swappers, then the odds are a little better, though still slim.
Here's a quick look at how the RIAA has done its investigations and what kind of information it has used to find people and file Monday's lawsuits.
Step one: Finding file-traders isn't hard. Anybody who opens a shared folder on Kazaa, Morpheus or any other file-swapping network is susceptible to potentially prying eyes.
In the most recent wave of investigations, the RIAA has used automated tools that look for a relatively short list of files. When it finds a person sharing one or more of those files, it downloads all or many of them for verification purposes. A complete list of these target files is not available, but a sampling of files cited in the early lawsuits includes the following artists and songs:
[quote]File-swapping lawsuits: Are you next?
By John Borland
CNET News.com
September 8, 2003, 5:10 PM PT
The Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 alleged file swappers Monday, launching a legal campaign against ordinary Internet users that could ultimately result in thousands of additional lawsuits.
But are you at risk?
If you or a family member have used Kazaa or any other file-swapping application recently and have left your computer open to the Net, the answer is possibly--although the odds of being singled out among an estimated 60 million people using peer-to-peer software remain small. If you've kept thousands of songs in the file you're sharing with other file swappers, then the odds are a little better, though still slim.
Here's a quick look at how the RIAA has done its investigations and what kind of information it has used to find people and file Monday's lawsuits.
Step one: Finding file-traders isn't hard. Anybody who opens a shared folder on Kazaa, Morpheus or any other file-swapping network is susceptible to potentially prying eyes.
In the most recent wave of investigations, the RIAA has used automated tools that look for a relatively short list of files. When it finds a person sharing one or more of those files, it downloads all or many of them for verification purposes. A complete list of these target files is not available, but a sampling of files cited in the early lawsuits includes the following artists and songs:
