Profits Aside, They’re Still Suing

Remember back before recording companies started to make buckets of money from downloadable music, when they were so desperate to stop illegal file-trading that they started suing hundreds of college kids for millions of dollars? Yeah, well, they never actually stopped doing that. This week, the Recording Industry Association of America filed 745 new “John Doe” lawsuits against users of various peer-to-peer networks whom the RIAA suspects of passing copyrighted material. Why the “John Doe” caveat? The RIAA doesn’t actually know who the offenders are, so they effectively sue the user’s IP address, then try to sue or intimidate colleges and other internet providers into revealing the identities of the people behind the computer signature.