RIAA Goes After Usenet Newsgroups for Copyright Infringement

Perhaps empowered by a recent $222,000 ruling in its favor, the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) is now going after Usenet.com, one of the companies hosting the distributed Usenet newsgroups, for "consciously and blatantly" facilitating the illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

The recording industry filed suit Friday in a New York district court and is looking to recover Usenet profits, $150,000 per infringement and attorneys fees.

The RIAA asserts in its filing that Usenet.com is "almost identical" to Napster and other illegal P2P file sharing services. Usenet.com, however, goes further to provide "enhancements that make the service more attractive" for those looking to share files illegally, according to the suit.








Usenet.com allows users to share data on its system like a message board. The service provides a variety of service plans, from $18.95 per month for unlimited access to $4.95 per month for 2GB of space.

The RIAA alleges that these fees encourage Usenet to support infringement. Usenet.com's "profits increase with the amount of infringement it fosters [because] binary files are significantly larger than text files," according to the suit. "The more copyrighted sound recordings users download, the more money [Usenet.com] makes."

The RIAA points to notices on the Usenet Web site that appear to encourage illegal downloads like: "Shh ... Quiet! We believe it's no one's business but your own what you do on the Internet or in Usenet. We don't track user activity."

Such statement could be problematic in court in the RIAA wants to invoke the Grokster ruling, in which the Supreme Court ruled against filing sharing services because it found that "each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement"

A copyright policy on the Usenet Web site prohibits the trading of illegal material, but the RIAA claims that Usenet nonetheless "expressly promises its users that it will not take action against them for downloading infringing material."

Usenet.com did immediately respond to requests for comment.

A quick perusal of songs being illegally downloaded by Usenet.com users, meanwhile, include selections from Ace of Base, Air Supply, Kenny G and Milli Vanilli, so perhaps this case should be an attack on musical tastes rather than Internet practices.