RIAA Sues Another 532 Alleged Song Pirates; Many Students Targeted

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 23, 2004 - 4:44am.

Washington -- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on Tuesday that it has filed 532 additional lawsuits against alleged music file-swappers, bringing the total number of individuals sued for copyright infringement by the record label trade group to 1,977. This third wave of suits includes actions filed against students at 21 different universities, where peer-to-peer file-sharing is extremely popular. "It's important for everyone to understand that no one is immune from the consequences of illegally 'sharing' music files," said RIAA president Cary Sherman. "Piracy, which is particularly rampant on college campuses, continues to hurt retailers, musicians, producers, record labels and the thousands of less-celebrated individuals involved in making music." The current RIAA lawsuits were filed against "John Doe" defendants, following a federal court ruling that stipulated an earlier expedited process used to obtain file-swappers' identities from their Internet service providers was illegal. None of the RIAA's lawsuits against individual file-swappers has gone to trial; the group has settled over 400 of the suits for sums averaging $3,000.
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