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| | | January 25, 2004
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Sunday, January 25, 2004 |
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RIAA sues 532 John Does
After suffering a major legal setback in December that blocked its ability to identify U.S.-based file-swappers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group representing all major and numerous smaller record labels, launched its biggest round of lawsuits against individual Internet users who allegedly shared copyrighted digital music files.
On Wednesday, RIAA sued 532 people who the association claims had been particularly "egregious" offenders, sharing 800 or more copyrighted songs. Since last September, the recording industry has sued hundreds of peer-to-peer users, most of them agreeing to settle for about $3,000, instead of going ahead with the lawsuits. U.S. copyright laws provide for fines of up to $150,000 per illegally shared file if guilt is proven.
Obeying the December ruling by a U.S. federal appeals court, RIAA has slightly changed its strategy from previous litigation rounds. The newly sued individuals were only identified by the IP addresses and their lawsuits were filed against unknown, a.k.a. John Doe, defendants. "The process by which we identify defendants has changed, but the program has not," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a press conference announcing the new phase of the campaign.
More from: CNET News.com | InformationWeek | InternetNews.com | NewsFactor 1 2 | PC World | Reuters | TechNewsWorld | VNUNET.com | The Washington Post 1 2
SCO fires a lawsuit at Novell
File-traders were not the only ones slapped with high-profile lawsuits this week. The SCO Group filed a "slander of title" lawsuit against Novell for misleadingly claiming some of the copyrights on the UNIX operating system. Last year, SCO launched a controversial litigation campaign against the open-source community, claiming the Linux operating system illegally incorporates critical portions of UNIX source code.
The foundation of SCO's allegations is its claim of ownership of all UNIX intellectual property which it purchased from Novell in 1995. Novell, which itself acquired UNIX copyrights from AT&T, claims it only transferred some of the copyrights to SCO and retained substantial ownership of the source code.
Meanwhile, Novell is repositioning itself as a major open-source player after buying out Ximian and SuSE Linux in the past few months. At the same time, SCO is vehemently attacking open-source software, calling it a threat to the U.S. economy and lobbying the U.S. Congress for legislative action.
In its latest lawsuit, The SCO Group is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and an order for Novell to withdraw its "false" claims of ownership of UNIX copyrights.
More from: CNET News.com | Computerworld 1 2 | CRN | eWeek 1 2 | InternetNews.com | The Register | Reuters
Microsoft backs down from MikeRoweSoft.com claims
Just three months after registering his domain name, Mike Rowe, a 17-year-old high school student from Vancouver, Canada, received an e-mail from Microsoft's lawyers asking him to transfer his domain name to the software giant. The domain? MikeRoweSoft.com, a web site set up by Rowe to promote his part-time work as a web developer.
According to a harshly critical story published by The Register, Rowe was "amazed and appalled", and rejected Microsoft's claim that the domain name infringes on the company's trademark. Then again, Microsoft's legal team offered the teenager to reimburse the cost of the domain name registration, which turned out to be only $10. Rowe declined the offer and asked for $10,000, but on January 14 he received a package from the company, which explained that attempting to sell the domain proved he never wanted to make good use of it, and actually tried to take advantage of the software maker's world-renowned trademark.
After gaining worldwide notoriety, however, the case struck a different chord. From local Canadian news outlets to wire services and broadcast TV channels in the U.S., the dispute between the teenager and the world's largest software maker was getting more and more popular by the hour, and Microsoft was not the one profiting from the publicity. A representative for the company later acknowledged that the case had probably been taken "too seriously", signaling Microsoft is ready to back down and try to reach a compromise.
More from: CNET News.com | The Register 1 2 | Reuters | Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Silicon.com
In Other News...
 Microsoft flashed past analysts' expectations and reported record-breaking revenue of $10.15 billion, or 14 cents a share, for the three-month period that ended December 31. The earnings included expenses of 34 cents per share for covering the costs of a stock-based compensation and an employee program for selling underwater stock options. Analysts had expected a profit of 30 cents per share on revenue of $9.74 billion.
Under strong pressure from U.S. federal regulators and after warnings the company's efforts had "fallen short" of expectations, Microsoft took the decision to revamp its protocol licensing program, established in response to a 2002 antitrust agreement with the United States government. The overhauled Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) will simplify the way developers license critical communications technology in Windows 2000, Windows XP and their successors.
Microsoft asked a judge to move the lawsuit filed against it by RealNetworks from the U.S. state of California to Washington saying the venue makes no sense since the two companies are based in Washington. Internet media company RealNetworks filed an antitrust lawsuit against the giant in December last year, claiming the software maker unfairly bundled its media player with the ubiquitous Windows operating system and thus hurt the business of its rival. Analysts believe that the lawsuit's location was deliberately chosen by RealNetworks in an area where most of Microsoft's competitors are based and a potential jury could be negatively disposed against it.
According to a news report published by CNET News.com, Sean Fanning, the original creator of Napster, is working on a project, which will enable peer-to-peer systems to pay record labels for copyrighted audio files transmitted through their networks. In the past months, Fanning has been working at San Francisco-based Snocap on a technology which will allow file-sharing applications to put price tags on files found in music search results.
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