(News)--Florida Court Sends RIAA Away
Source: www.wired.com
Wired News Report Page 1 of 1
05:00 PM Apr. 01, 2004 PT
Record labels must file individual lawsuits against suspected file sharers rather than lumping them together in a single suit, a federal judge in Florida ruled Thursday.
The Recording Industry Association of America has sued nearly 2,000 file swappers in jurisdictions around the country. In this lawsuit, the music trade group bundled 25 suspected file swappers who share the same Internet service provider, Bright House Networks, into one legal action.
Over the past several months, the RIAA has had several legal hurdles to leap in its pursuit of file sharers.
Last year, the recording industry relied on a streamlined subpoena process in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to quickly collect suspects' names from ISPs. In December, a federal judge ruled that this process was illegal, so the RIAA was forced to use the so-called John Doe method, where alleged traders are only identified by their computer addresses. To discover the defendants' real names, the music industry must first file a John Doe lawsuit.
"Courts are beginning to recognize that the record companies' crusade against file sharers is stepping on the privacy and due-process rights of those accused," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a statement.
"These decisions are simply requiring the record companies to follow the rules that everyone else has to follow when bringing lawsuits," Cohn said. |
