Tag archive: RIAA

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of Boston was handling the case of Joel Tenenbaum versus the Recording Industry Association of America. Tenenbaum had been found guilty of using file-sharing software Kazaa to download and share 30 tracks. The original amount of damages to be awarded to the RIAA was $22,500 per song, but was reduced by Judge Gertner down to $2,250 per song making the full payment $67,500. She originally… Read More

A federal court has reduced the damages award against the Jammie Thomas-Rasset from $62,500 for each song she's accused of sharing over peer-to-peer networks to $2,250 per song, bringing the total penalties against Thomas Rasset from $1.5 million to $54,000. Judge Michael Davis — who has presided over many incarnations of the case, wrote in his decision: “The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and… Read More

In a move supported by movie studios, record labels and the Obama administration, Internet providers have banded together to form a universal policy that imposes penalties on illegal downloads. The system allows for six strikes on an account with warning levels. The process starts with emails that require acknowledgement from the account holder. If the warnings are completely ignored, the final strikes result in decreasing Internet speed and… Read More

Tennessee lawmakers think that sharing a Netflix password is like stealing cable. Today, lawmakers in the state passed a new measure that criminalizes using a friend's login for entertainment services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Rhapsody. All the bill needs now is the governor's signature, and the AP reports that Gov. Bill Haslam is expected to sign the bill. “I don't know enough about that legislation, but if it's… Read More

We have a new winner in the race to make movie fans give up on Hollywood altogether. The producers of Oscar award-winning film Hurt Locker have now sued a record-breaking 24,583 people for allegedly illegally downloading the movie over a peer-to-peer filesharing network, reports Torrent Freak. Voltage Pictures hopes to recover millions of dollars in damages from the defendants for money lost due to piracy. This lawsuit, headed by Washington,… Read More

The LimeWire saga continues. Today, the RIAA announced that it reached a $105 million out-of-court settlement with LimeWire, a now defunct file-sharing network. This settlement comes a year after after a judge ruled that the P2P network actively helped users violate music copyright laws. The network has been down since October. “We are pleased to have reached a large monetary settlement following the court’s finding that both LimeWire and… Read More

Well that didn't take long. LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file sharing network  that was shut down due to music pirating, has been pirated. A group of hackers have rebuilt the program and re-released it. According to TorrentFreak, a “secret dev team” has “reanimated the lifeless corpse of LimeWire and like an irrepressible file-sharing zombie, the world's favorite Gnutella client is back.” Gnutella is the network… Read More

In her third round in court, Jammie Thomas-Rasset has once again been found guilty of downloading and sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. This time, she has been ordered to cough up $1.5 million for a couple dozen tunes, which allegedly included Green Day and Aerosmith. Earlier this year, when Thomas-Rasset was found guilty for the second time, she was ordered to pay nearly $2 million, but the judge in her case ruled that was “monstrous and shocking,”… Read More

The era of peer-to-peer filesharing may be ending. Today, CNET reports that U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction ordering the LimeWire online service shut down. The ruling comes as a victory for the RIAA, which has been fighting Lime Wire for years, contending that it promotes the illegal download of music and costs the industry in upwards of $500 million a month. The injunction comes after the judge issued a summary judgement in… Read More

Most smartphones don’t have FM radios. But you won’t hear many iPhone users bemoaning the lack of loudmouth radio jocks and lengthy commercials when they have streaming services like Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker pumping out listener-tailored tunes for free. Internet radio has bitten off a chunk of traditional radio’s business, and the broadcasting industry knows it. In an effort to corral more people back into FM, the industry now wants to the… Read More

A federal judge on Friday drastically trimmed a $675,000 verdict against a Boston University graduate student who was found liable for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs online, saying the jury damage award against a person who gained no financial benefit from his copyright infringement is “unconstitutionally excessive.” Joel Tenenbaum, from Providence, R.I., was sued by some of the largest music companies who said he… Read More

Following the court decision that found LimeWire’s creators liable for distributing illegal content, the Recording Industry Association of America has now asked the courts to shut down the file sharing service, claiming that the illegal sharing has been continuing and it shows no signs of stopping. If the judge agrees, LimeWire’s service would shut down, the software would not be available to download, and it could not advertise. It could return… Read More

Australia's Federal Court in Sydney has ruled that Internet service provider iiNet is not responsible for illegal downloading activity carried out by its users. The ISP had been sued by an industry groups that includes Australian divisions of many of Hollywood's biggest studios, including Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros., who claimed that iiNet was guilty of copyright infringement… Read More

A federal judge on Friday drastically reduced a nearly $2 million verdict against a Minnesota woman found guilty last year of sharing 24 songs over the Internet, calling the jury's penalty “monstrous and shocking.” U.S. District Judge Michael Davis reduced the $1.92 million penalty a jury imposed against Jammie Thomas-Rasset of Brainerd to $2,250 per song, or about $54,000. “The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2… Read More

“No two ways about it: Piracy is legally and morally wrong.” We’ve all heard it a million times. We’ve heard the analogies to walking out of a store with a CD under your jacket, sending software developers straight to the unemployment line or ripping food right out of a poor key grip’s mouth. And for some of us, we’ve even seen people we know ensnared by the law when they finally get caught gorging on free motion pictures and music. Like… Read More