Over 260 Filetraders Charged For Copyright Infringement

The Record Industry Association of America recently filed over 260 copyright infringement lawsuits in US courts, marking the first occasion of action being taken against individuals and not p2p (peer-to-peer) networks.

Only those users who shared songs held on their hard-drive were targeted, with those charged on average having more than 1,000 copyrighted songs available for download. It is worrying to consider that under US copyright law each defendant could be charged up to $232,198 Australian per song ($150,000 US) when considering the number of copyrighted tracks in question.

Users of Grokster and Kazaa were the main targets, along with Gnutella, Blubster and iMesh. It is also reported that all those charged had previous received warnings via instant message.
Tags