Oh crud, does this mean no more bootlegs!!!!??

[wondergirl9847]

Audiogalaxy in RIAA crosshairs
Fri May 24, 8:14 PM ET
John Borland CNET News.com

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) on Friday filed a copyright lawsuit against Audiogalaxy, adding another front to the industry's legal battles against post-Napster (news - web sites) 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.

Like several other file-swapping services, Audiogalaxy began efforts to filter access to some copyrighted works in mid-2001 after Napster was ordered to do so by a federal judge. However, Napster was never able to comply completely with the court order, and the company shut down its service rather than face increased legal liability.

The RIAA also has copyright suits pending against Napster, StreamCast Networks and its Morpheus software, Amsterdam-based Kazaa BV, West Indies-based Grokster, MP3Board and Madster (formerly known as Aimster).

The Audiogalaxy suit was filed in the southern district of New York, naming the company and CEO Michael Merhej. According to Oppenheim, 476 copyrighted works, all of which could be downloaded using Audiogalaxy, serve as the basis of the suit.

The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents songwriters, also joined the RIAA in the lawsuit.

Oppenheim said the recording industry gave Audiogalaxy large numbers of songs to be filtered at several different periods, and the labels periodically updated these lists with information about new releases.

Audiogalaxy filters some searches, but the blocking appears to be haphazard. A search for Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence"--one track cited by the RIAA--came up with 41 matches. The first was blocked, and clicking on it returned a message saying: "SEARCH PROHIBITED. You cannot request this song due to copyright restrictions. Please try a different search."

The remaining 40 versions of the song were not blocked, however.

Audiogalaxy's Merhej could not immediately be reached for comment.

[estranged4life]

the problem is steming from songs that are officially released from an artist more-so than anything else...Brian

PS-I told a fellow demo trader what I saw recently on Fox News Channel;
Which is that newer Cd-R & Cd-RW drives for certain PC's will SUPPOSEDLY start having new chip encryption technology that will detect mp3's, and other types of music files and block download of the said files. This has something to do with the whole Napster/RIAA fiasco...It remains to be seen if this will happen however.

[demoguy]

Most of the so-called encryption schemes can be easily bypassed, for example, an audio cd can be recorded from an external line input jack into your p.c. and copied as a .wav file, then burned to cd with little loss of quality. This would work no matter what form of copy protection technology is used. If your p.c.'s cd rom will play it at all, but won't record it as a mp3, you can use a program such as "Total Recorder" that will copy ANY audio that is routed to your sound card and record it either as an mp3 or .wav file, thereby stripping off any type of copy protection that may have existed before. Very simple and easy to bypass, and I'm sure others will come up with more ways to bypass any copy protections that are put into force (mod chips for your cd rom, for example). So don't worry! It'll be easy.

[estranged4life]

a TDK DA-3826 Dual well Cd-RW/Cd-R system. I can use either analog, optical or digital input for dubbing, But with dual wells I don't even need an input source...Even the directions tell how to bypass the new encryption technology...lol...I love this lil' sucker cause it can,(And has...), recorded all types of music files...Brian