In response to this, and response to the activities being conducted in America by the RIAA, many Canadian artists, most importantly, ones signed to the major labels, are uniting against the CRIA and RIAA, in defense of their fans.

It was reported on March 30th, by SaveTheMusicFan.com, that Avril Lavigne was defending one of her fans against the Recording Industry, who allegedly downloaded and shared her music. You can read that article here.

Now Avril Lavigne, and other Canadian artists are uniting, forming, ‘Canadian Music Creators Coalition’. Members include, Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman.

I get these figures from a Janurary 2006 article at Slyck.com, in which Slyck states that as of January 31st there have been 16,837. Since then, in the month of February and the month of March there has been 750 more sued for each, resulting in the number at the top.

Most RIAA lawsuits against individual file-swappers result in the defendant settling with the RIAA to avoid going to court and possibly losing against the multi-billion dollar organization.

Generally, these suits are settled at $3,000 USD to $6,000 USD. I have seen in the past few years a $2,000 or a $7,000 every now and then, but for argument’s sake, we will say the average settled lawsuit is $5,000, since this appears most frequently.

Let’s say all 18,337 USA citizens sued have settled for $5,000 USD each, to avoid going to court and possibly losing their homes. That would give the RIAA massive profits of $91,685,000! The RIAA has profited nearly $100million by suing individual who are too helpless to fight back, since their ’sue em’ all’ campaign began, years ago.

Despite Music Industry studies which indicate that P2P users are more likely to purchase music, and P2P does not damage music sales, the RIAA continues to sue the magic number of 750 people a month.

Full Story: http://thepiratetimes.com/tpt/?p=65