RIAA Lawsuit Information

A RIAA lawsuit usually involves downloading music from the internet without paying royalties.

RIAA Overview

RIAA, which stands for the Recording Industry Association of America, is a conglomerate of four big music companies and distributors: EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. They represent over 1,600 member labels by collecting, administering and distributing music licenses and royalties.

RIAA was launched in 1952 to oversee a technical standard of frequency response for vinyl records during manufacturing and playback. They continue in this role today by creating and administering technical standards for magnetic tapes, cassettes, digital audiotapes, CDs and software based digital technology. A RIAA lawsuit usually deals with not paying royalties for music obtained on the Internet.

One thing you might not know about the RIAA is they're the organization that certifies gold and platinum albums and singles in the US.

To understand the basis of their mission and the reason why RIAA lawsuits are filed, you need to understand their goal to protect intellectual property rights worldwide. This includes First Amendment rights for artists. They also take the lead role in monitoring and reviewing relevant rights, policies and regulations in the music industry.

RIAA Problems & Legal Issues

The RIAA has a very large bone to pick with people who download music from the Internet and don't pay for it. So large that it has actually resulted in over 14,800 lawsuits. Their goal is to stop file swapping of music. Up until fairly recently not one of these 14,800 or so lawsuits had gone to court.

The litigation is about to begin on both sides - RIAA against a perceived offender and the perceived offender against RIAA for making false allegations against them.

RIAA Lawsuits

In 2005 a suit was filed with a New York woman accused of downloading music online. She stated she had no idea what they were talking about (that a friend's child was the culprit). The plaintiff moved for case dismissal, but the judge wasn't having it.

This would be the first actual trial on these kinds of charges, as RIAA had offered to settle suits with payments in the range of $3000-$4,000 by the accused to the RIAA. Prior to this particular case, it was reported that more than 3,000 people settled by paying.

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In Maine in 2008 a motion was filed on behalf of two University of Maine students sued by RIAA. The motion sought to have the original RIAA lawsuit against 27 students thrown out and to bar RIAA from bringing any more lawsuits like it in the future.

The major issue in this case was RIAA's habit of lumping a number of John Does into one lawsuit in order to serve a subpoena on a single school or ISP. None of the defendants are related, they only go to the same school or use the same ISP. The RIAA maintained that's good enough for their lawsuits.

However, once everyone's names and addresses were obtained, the "relationship" vanished and individual lawsuits were filed.

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In another 2008 lawsuit, the RIAA settled with a defendant for $108,000. This turned out to be a setback for the RIAA who were accused of being too litigious and using aggressive strategies to get defendants to settle.

If you have been slapped with a RIAA lawsuit, contact a lawyer and discuss your case. You may be able to avoid the lawsuit or settle out of court.




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