Tired of suing hundreds and hundreds of individual file downloaders the RIAA or Recording Industry Association of America has decided to hit file sharers at their source.
Last week the RIAA sent letters to seven P2P (or person to person) file sharing websites telling them to cease and desist… or else. According to the Wall Street Journal the sites included WinMX, LimeWare and BearShare.
The letters ask the companies to either implement filters in order to prevent people from downloading copyrighted material or to cease existence all together.
This comes after a US Supreme Court Decision in June that similar P2P sites Grokster and StreamCast were responsible for the copyright infringement of their users because the sites did nothing to stop them from sharing files. A similar verdict was reached by an Australian court in a case against Kazza another popular file sharing program.
LimeWire has put up a warning to those trying to download the software on their website saying “Please do not download LimeWire BASIC if you intend to use it to infringe copyright” and then giving the user the option to click yes they will infringe copyright or no they will not.
That should stop the pirates.
WinMX and BearShare have none of these warnings on their website.
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