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For Immediate Release: Monday, September 8, 2003

Recording Industry Announces Lawsuits Against Music Sharers

Electronic Frontier Foundation Warning on "Amnesty" Program

San Francisco - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today filed 261 lawsuits against people who allegedly shared copyrighted music online. The RIAA announced plans to sue more file-sharers and introduced an "amnesty" program available only to file-sharers who the RIAA has not yet identified or sued.

The lawsuits come in the wake of more than 1600 subpoenas the RIAA filed in recent weeks, seeking the identities of file-sharers who allegedly downloaded a "substantial amount" of copyrighted works. The RIAA claims that the music fans have engaged in illegal direct copyright infringement.

"More lawsuits is not the answer. Does anyone think that suing 60 million American file-sharers is going to motivate them to buy more CDs?" said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "File sharing networks represent the greatest library of music in history, and music fans would be happy to pay for access to it, if only the recording industry would let them."

Under the amnesty program, dubbed the "Clean Slate Program," the RIAA claims files-sharers can avoid lawsuits if they sign a declaration pledging that they will delete all copyrighted music files from their hard drives and mp3 players and never again share or download music illegally. The amnesty program is only available to people who the RIAA has not yet sued or subpoenaed.

"The RIAA has offered \'sham-nesty,\' not amnesty, for those sharing music online," explained EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "The recording industry wants file-sharers to confess guilt, while leaving these music fans vulnerable to lawsuits from record companies and music publishers and bands like Metallica that control independent music rights."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has maintained that the recording industry should offer file-sharers a real amnesty program, for example, an opportunity to pay a reasonable monthly fee for to access the music they love using file-sharing software.

Links:

Contact:

Wendy Seltzer
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  wendy@eff.org

Jason Schultz
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  jason@eff.org

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/

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