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Hot on the heels of a landmark victory in its file sharing case against a P2P service provider, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) is now looking to score another blow against file sharing. And this time it's personal.
In the former case, Hachioji, Tokyo-based MMO, operator of the P2P service Filerogue, was ruled liable for activities constituting copyright infringement that took place on the Filerogue network. After an appeal was lodged and promptly dismissed, MMO was ordered to pay slightly under 40 million yen in damages against music from 19 record labels. After the ruling, the RIAJ stated that it would continue to take drastic measures against such illegal use of music on the Internet that corrupts the “cycle of music creation" and leads to decline of the music culture.
While not widely reported in the international media, this decision has the potential to impact P2P related cases on a worldwide scale, as it is the first ruling against a plaintiff accused of file sharing on a network with no central host. Presently, the case of MGM vs. Grokster is being heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, and similar to the case case against MMO, MGM is after Grokster for copyright infringement that allegedly takes place on their P2P network.
Many opposed to the ruling, and to the Grokster case, argue that punishing legitimate technology for the actions of its users (in this case people sharing copyrighted music) is wrong. Oft-cited is the 1984 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of Sony after the company was sued in a similar issue over its VCRs. The decision ultimately proved to be extremely beneficial for all parties involved, as the movie industry turned the rental of VHS tapes into a market worth billions of dollars - arguably one of the major reasons that the movie industry can continue to exist profitably in the United States.
In the most recent development in the war against file sharing, the RIAJ on April 13 pushed their claim for damages another notch down the food chain by identifying five individuals confirmed to have been using P2P software to share copyrighted music, and is presently in negotiation regarding an amount for compensation. Claiming that this type of file sharing is one reason for the drastically declining sales of music in Japan, the RIAJ has stated that it will continue to take decisive measures whenever this sort of illegal behavior is confirmed again in the future.
According to the RIAJ, the investigation was launched as a reaction to a file sharing boom in Japan that shows no signs of slowing. The investigation has to date confirmed 44 cases of illegal sharing. Subsequent requests to internet service providers yielded personal information on the five individuals cited in the case.
This case, being against individuals, is yet another first in Japan, although similar cases have become a common occurrence in the United States, where the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have sued well over 10,000 people. The lawsuits in the United States, however, appear to be having little effect in slowing down the P2P user population there, which has simply drifted away from the high profile services and toward the many of lower profile names like eDonkey and Gnutella, which are both seeing rapid growth in users since Grokster and other major networks have been targeted.
How P2P technology user numbers in Japan will be affected by the above cases remains to be seen, but one thing is certain. The industry is presently going through a significant downturn, and it's not going to back off anytime soon.
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