RIAA Files 477 New Filesharing Lawsuits

Fallen Kell writes "According to the CNN story, the RIAA has filed another round of lawsuits against filesharers. This round has many college students who are allegedly sharing music on their university networks. Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses. No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown."

Comments

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[AArmadillo]

They've yet to accuse somebody who "didn't do it". Illegal music filesharers beware... you have a substatial risk of having to pay the piper.

That isn't entirely true. Several months ago slashdot posted an article about some old lady with a mac that had a lawsuit filed against her by the RIAA. When the RIAA discovered this, and that she couldn't possibly be running the filesharing software they accused her of (it only ran on windows) they dropped the suit. I believe there have been other instances like this as well.

Nat?

[SCSi]

What if the dorm was behind NAT? Is the RIAA going to file 10 lawsuits against one or two public ip address?
Of course there is always the possiblity for a person to hard-code a dorm IP address in rather than rely on one given by DHCP (at least when I was in college the entire dorm was on one class C).. Not to mention that more dorm rooms have > 1 person in them.
Sounds like a big headache for the university..

Re:File sharing - the best form of marketing

[bonch]

Ah, the lame "free marketing" argument.

All those people online are merely "sampling" all the "free advertising" going on. Your musical interests grew, and you attribute it to piracy instead of just attributing it to the fact your musical interests grew at that time. One anecdotal story doesn't justify everybody ripping people off.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Shakrai]

In any case, I'm not pulling for a successful defense until someone innocent is accused, and I'd say it's unlikely that it happened yet.

Yeah because sharing a few media files should bankrupt you and ruin your life for the next seven years.

How about punishment in line with the crime here? Do you really think a damn mp3 is worth $150,000? What happens if someone takes this to court and loses? They will be forced into Chapter Seven bankruptcy. Do you really deserve that over sharing music?

Millions of Americans have (or are) sharing music. When millions of people start doing something we need to look at the reasons why -- not react by filing lawsuits and trying to ruin their lives.