Illegal Downloading
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a group that is considered representative of the recording industry as a whole. It is the legal entity that protects the rights of recording artists and their works. The RIAA looks to ensure that artists are paid for their works in a fair manner, since it represents 85 percent of all recording artists and associated industry workers like producers and recording engineers.
One of the RIAA's main issues is fighting illegal downloading, which is the process where someone acquires an audio file without paying for it. Illegal downloaders, according to the RIAA, are taking money out of the artists' and industry's pockets for every song they illegally acquire. According to the RIAA's website, illegal downloading accounts for more than $12 billion in losses each year. As such, the RIAA began finding ways to catch illegal downloaders and serving lawsuits to recuperate costs and hopefully deter others from doing so.
Logging On
One method the RIAA uses to catch illegal downloaders is by searching for them inside peer to peer networks. The RIAA employs a third party company called MediaSentry that logs onto peer-to-peer websites and monitors users. They search for users who attempt to get audio tracks from the RIAA's list of represented artists, such as Madonna or Stevie Wonder. MediaSentry looks for the tracks' original owners and also searches for any other people attempting to acquire the track. They then record the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the downloaders, since each address is unique to the owner. MediaSentry gets a digital fingerprint of the track on the downloader's computer and sends the information to the RIAA. The RIAA then decides whether or not to pursue legal action.
Suing Providers
The RIAA has also sued various Internet entities that they deem as enablers for illegal downloading. Among them was Napster, one of the first free peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Although Napster never kept entire tracks of recording artists on its servers, the RIAA eventually won a decision in court that prevented Napster from hosting any file sharing that could be seen as copyright infringement.
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