Audiogalaxy being sued by RIAA

[jadedskies]

Here we go again...

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The Recording Industry Association of America on Friday filed a copyright lawsuit against Audiogalaxy, adding another front to the industry's legal battles against post-Napster file-swapping services.

Filed in federal court in New York, the suit charges that Audiogalaxy's efforts to filter access to copyrighted songs have been ineffective. As a result, free-ranging access to copyrighted works through the system has gone unchecked--much as once happened with Napster, the industry group contends.

"If they had demonstrated the ability to filter, we wouldn't be here," said Matt Oppenheim, an RIAA senior vice president. "A first-year computer programmer could do better than they have."

Audiogalaxy is one of the oldest Napster clones and has been consistently popular for the last year. According to Download.com, a software aggregation site operated by News.com publisher CNET Networks, the software has been downloaded at least 30 million times.

Its popularity has fallen off somewhat in recent months, eclipsed by higher-profile services including Kazaa. But many MP3 hunters, discussing the merits of various services on online bulletin boards, continue to say that Audiogalaxy remains the best place to find rare or bootleg tracks.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cn/20020525/tc_cn/audiogalaxy_in_riaa_crosshairs

 

[Diesel]

IMHO, Audiogalaxy has made it more than inconvenient to find popular tracks by blocking the most popular naming conventions.

I've had more than one occasion where I've had to spend a bit of time trying to hunt down the song I wanted.

I have a feeling that the RIAA would complain if it were able to find any single copyrighted song on a P2P network by saying that the network's "filtering measures were ineffective".
Whining f-cking maggots!

 

[jadedskies]

Yes, I agree...
I'm downloading a huge list of mp3s that my friend recommended. The original list was about eight pages, but in the end, I'm going to have about 2 1/2 pages that I'm going to have to go through again, either because Audiogalaxy gave me a dodgy version, or because I couldn't get around the blocks.

But Audiogalaxy has one problem that makes it an easier target.
With many bands, they block all the renamed tracks, with the exception of remixes and live versions, which makes the album tracks very hard to find.

But with some, like the Simon and Garfunkel case they highlighted there, they only block the original, and don't block any of the renamed versions.

But yes, they are whining f-cking maggots indeed. :D