Record Industry Sues 531 More File-Sharers
By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. music industry on Tuesday sued 531 more people for online copyright infringement using a method known as the John Doe litigation process because their names are not yet known.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which cites digital piracy as a big factor behind a three-year slump in CD sales, said it filed five separate lawsuits against 531 users of undisclosed Internet Service Providers.

The trade group filed four similar suits against 532 illegal file-shares in January.

In the latest round, lawsuits were filed in federal courts in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando and Trenton, New Jersey.

The RIAA is using the John Doe method, identifying song swappers by numerical Internet addresses, because it has been unable to sue suspected pirates by name since December, when an appeals court sided with Verizon Communications (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) by ruling that ISPs did not have to respond to subpoenas filed as a prelude to lawsuits requesting names of users.

As in the last round, the RIAA plans to discover swappers' names and locations through court-issued subpoenas. It said it has began issuing subpoenas to learn the identities of 333 file-sharers targeted in the first round of John Doe suits.

The rest are still pending in a Washington, D.C., federal court where public interest groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union have filed a brief saying the RIAA's interpretation of the Verizon ruling was an invitation to mistake and misuse.

The RIAA has been accused in the past of incorrectly targeting certain defendants, who have said that neither they nor their computers had been involved in illegal file-sharing.

The RIAA dropped one case against a 66-year-old grandmother in Massachusetts who said she was improperly targeted.

Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon, which was an ISP involved in the first batch of John Doe suits, said it had not yet received any subpoenas and was waiting to see the outcomes of the briefs brought by the public interest groups.

We're waiting for the resolution of the due process issues that have been raised by the public interest groups, she said.

The lawsuits filed on Tuesday drew even more criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which said the industry failed to ensure the accused had a means for reviewing and responding to potentially incorrect accusations before ISPs reveal their identities.

The RIAA continues to cut corners in its crusade against file-sharers and deny ordinary people the legal protections that are available in all other types of legal cases, said Cindy Cohn, legal director for EFF.

Chuck Sims, who as a partner for the New York-based law firm of Proskauer Rose has worked with the record industry, said the labels were just playing by the rules.

I'd expect a new round of criticism, but in fact they have done what they ought to do and they should be successful, he said.

The RIAA represents the world's big record labels, which are arms of such media conglomerates as Time Warner Inc. (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Bertelsmann AG's (BERT.UL: Quote, Profile, Research) , EMI Group Plc (EMI.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Vivendi Universal (V.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (EAUG.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) .

In recent years, record labels and musicians including Metallica and Sheryl Crow have campaigned against peer-to-peer networks like Napster and Kazaa, claiming they have contributed to plummeting CD sales and cheated them out of royalties by letting people swap music for free.

But in a recent bit of good news, Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks U.S. music sales, reported that U.S. album sales so far in 2004 were up 10.4 percent from the same period a year earlier. That continues a trend that saw 2003 sales post a slower decline for the first time in three years.
Source: Reuters