RIAA Announces Latest Round Of Lawsuits

The RIAA today announced a new round of copyright infringement lawsuits against 757 individuals engaged in illegal P2P file-trading, including computer network users at 17 different colleges. These "John Doe" lawsuits cite individuals for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet via unauthorized peer-to-peer services such as eDonkey, Grokster, Kazaa and LimeWire. In addition, lawsuits filed in this round against university network users target students using the file-sharing application i2hub to download and distribute music on the Internet2 network. 

Today's litigation marks the third time the music industry has taken action to combat theft on Internet2's specialized, high-speed university computer network, for a total of 560 lawsuits at 39 campuses this year.

The news about the lawsuits comes as both WINMX and eDONKEY have apparently shut down operations. eDONKEY parent METAMACHINE President SAM YAGAN told the Senate Judiciary Committee in testimony THURSDAY (9/29) that his company is complying with the RIAA's cease-and-desist letter and that "I am not here as an active participant in the future of P2P, but rather as one who has thrown in the towel and with no interest in replaying past issues." YAGEN said that the cost of protracted litigation would be too much for his company despite his contention that his company did nothing wrong. He also said that METAMACHINE would attempt to convert eDONKEY into a sanctioned online retailer of music. WINMX shut down its operations last week.

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