New York - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com, a company that redistributes traffic from the Usenet global message-board network.

Take our Poll: Are the RIAA's lawsuits helping or hurting?

Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet forums, was established back in 1980, a decade before the World Wide Web existed.

It now moves most of its traffic over the public Internet on a decentralized network, where users post e-mail-like messages and files to newsgroups.

Usenet has long been a source for downloads of copyrighted materials, but has not been a target until the RIAA's suit against Usenet.com, which the record label trade group claims in its filing "enables and encourages" copyright infringement.

"Usenet.com has promoted and advanced an illegal business model on the backs of the music community," RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth told Wired.

"It may be theft in a slightly different online form, but the illicit business model of usenet.com is little different than the Groksters of the world… This business should not be allowed to remain a brazen outlaw that actively shirks its legal obligations."

The company may mount a defense based on the "safe harbor" provisions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prevents service providers like ISPs from being sued for the actions of users of their services.

Related Links:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/10/riaa_usenet

http://tinyurl.com/yrmsy2 (Ars Technica)

http://tinyurl.com/38wvhm (PDF of complaint via Wired)

http://www.usenet.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet