The recording industry opened up a new legal front in its battle against Internet music-swapping, suing the operators of the Aimster website, contending it is a new version of Napster.
"With a few additional functions ... Aimster provides the same functions of Napster," the Recording Industry of America said in its suit filed yesterday.
The RIAA has already obtained a court injunction against Napster, a wildly popular website that attracted some 60 million global users by allowing them to freely swap music files over the Internet.
Aimster, which piggybacks on the America Online instant messaging system, has contended that its service is legal.
But the suit says the operators of Aimster "created their system in order to capitalize on the marketplace success that Napster achieved and to supplant Napster as the preferred forum for the unlawful copying and distribution of copyrighted works."
Joining the suit filed in New York are record labels including Sony, EMI and BMG. The suit seeks $150,000 dollars in damages for each instance of infringement, and punitive damages, as well as a court order to halt the swapping of copyrighted music on the site.
According to the lawsuit, the number of Aimster users is growing by at least one million per month amid the shift of Web users away from Napster, which has begun efforts to filter out copyrighted songs to comply with a court order.
The Aimster site allegedly allows users to trade music from, among others, the Beatles, Britney Spears, Shania Twain, Elvis Presley, the Backstreet Boys, Bob Dylan and numerous others, the suit said.
The suit said the RIAA invited Aimster founder Johnny Deep to meet to discuss the issue, but that Aimster canceled the meetings and filed their own lawsuits seeking a declaratory judgment against the RIAA.
According to market researchers, Napster usage dropped by a third in April as it began filtering out songs that the major record labels claim are copyrighted.
AFP