Crackdown on music piracy

2003-06-26 07:43

Washington - The recording industry on Wednesday signalled it would step up its fight against online piracy of music, saying it will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against computer users involved in large-scale file sharing.

The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement it would begin the effort on Thursday.

RIAA "will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to 'share' substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks," the association said in a statement.

RIAA was instrumental in shutting down Napster, the once wildly-popular music-swapping site. But since then, other sites have cropped up using file-sharing that does not store music on central servers and is thus more difficult to target.

"The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear - this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences," said RIAA president Cary Sherman.

"We'd much rather spend time making music then dealing with legal issues in courtrooms. But we cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry."

The RIAA said it could file thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement, the first of which could take place as early as mid-August.

- AFX