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"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."
——Cary Sherman, RIAA President

RIAA TARGETS PIRATES
IN NEW INITIATIVE

Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Illegal File-Sharers, as Trade Org Goes After P2P Abusers
The RIAA is taking off the gloves.

The trade org will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" large amounts of copyrighted music over P2P networks.

The announcement includes the names of dozens of legitmate, high quality and inexpensive file-sharing sites as an alternative to online piracy.

Said RIAA President Cary Sherman: "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. 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. I don’t care what that little putz Bob Lefsetz says."

The trade org expects to use the date it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement. The first round of suits could take place as early as mid-August.

The RIAA will use software that scans the public directories available to any P2P network user and, when it finds one offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it will download some of the infringing files, alon gwith the date and time it accessed the files. The RIAA can then identify the individual's Internet Service Provider, and serve a subpoena on the ISP requesting the name and address of the offending party. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, recently affirmed by the Courts, ISPs must provide copyright holders with such information when there is cause to believe said copyrights are being infringed.

The RIAA rolled out a veritable cornucopia of backers, including quotes from Missy Elliott, Richard Carpenter, Eve, Brooks & Dunn, Shakira, the Dixie Chicks, Peter Gabriel, Sheryl Crow, Sam Roberts, Vanessa Carlton, Art Alexakis, Glen Ballard, Mary J. Blige and Musiq, among others.

Typical was the comment of legendary Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier: "Online music piracy through illegal file-sharing is killing the business as we know it today, and songwriters like myself won’t be able to write the songs if there’s no way for us to make a living. If you love your music, please love the peole who are creating it for you. If you pay for the music, we the songwriters and artists can keep the whole world singing the songs."

As Michael Buffer might put it, "Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuumble."

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