YUP THEY GOT'EM
Music industry, song-swapping site reach deal
Reuters
Jun 17 2002 8:03PM
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Music industry groups, including record labels, songwriters and music publishers Monday said they reached a legal settlement with file-sharing Internet service Audiogalaxy.com for an unspecified payment and an agreement to block unauthorized material from the service.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a powerful trade group for the record labels, and the National Music Publishers Association had filed suit against Audiogalaxy in a New York federal court in late May.
The suit had charged Audiogalaxy with encouraging and facilitating online trade by "millions of individual, anonymous users" in copyrighted music.
The full terms of the quickly reached settlement were not available but as part of the deal Austin, Texas-based Audiogalaxy agreed to filter the songs available on its network and ensure that the copyright holders had consented to their use, the music groups said.
Audiogalaxy also agreed to pay the music publishers and record companies a "substantial sum" to resolve the case quickly, the groups said in a statement.
A representative for Audiogalaxy, which had been one of the more heavily trafficked file-sharing Web sites to spring up after the court-ordered shutdown of Napster, could not be immediately reached for comment.
"This should serve as a wake-up call to the other networks that facilitate unauthorized copying," said Hilary Rosen, chairman of the RIAA. "The responsibility for implementing systems that allow for the authorized use of copyrighted works rests squarely on the shoulders of the peer-to-peer network."
The settlement does not require court approval, a spokeswoman for the RIAA said.
The record industry has waged and won a series of legal battles against online file-swapping services, including the high-profile case against Napster.
The music industry blames such services for encouraging consumers to conduct a massive, black-market trade in recorded music, a phenomenon it says has eaten into legitimate sales.
Napster is now controlled by Bertelsmann AG, which acquired the assets of the original peer-to-peer network as part of a deal under which Napster will emerge from bankruptcy as a unit of Europe's second-largest media group.
The settlement in the Audiogalaxy case would allow the privately held service to operate what the recording industry called a "filter-in" system, essentially requiring that all music available was authorized for online sharing by the copyright holders, the music industry groups said.
Reuters/Variety