RIAA Hit List
The subpoenas are flying, and we're naming names. Are you on the list?
The recording industry has launched a sweeping effort to identify and shut down individual song swappers, making good on recent threats to expand its legal battle against copyright theft.The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has now issued more than 911 subpoenas to Internet service providers across the United States, trying to get the names of people still offering music on file-sharing networks such as KaZaA and Grokster.
Here is the RIAA Hit List, the user names of file traders targeted in the recording industry subpoenas.
Last month, there was the story of Jesse Jordan, a 19-year-old college student who became one of the first to be hit with a lawsuit by the RIAA. Jordan settled his case by paying $12,000 to the RIAA.
The following user names were culled from subpoenas filed with the US District Court in Washington, DC. All subpoenas, incidentally, are being served by the Los Angeles law firm of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp. A total of 253 RIAA subpoenas were listed as of July 22 through the federal court system's paid online database, PACER. The actual subpoenas are available to view online in about half the cases.
The court documents don't show individual users' real names. They do show file-sharing network user names, the user's ISP, the user's IP address, and a sampling of copyright songs the user allegedly made available for download. To date, many ISPs have been contacted, including Pac Bell Internet, SBC, Charter Communications, Comcast, Adelphia, RCN, and Time Warner.
Following is a list of user names we found during our review of the subpoenas. Also, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's searchable database of RIAA subpoenas, and its information on how to avoid a lawsuit.
ISPs on Alert
Here's a list of which ISPs and other service providers have received subpoenas from the RIAA, and how many subpoenas each provider has received. Numbers come from a review of the first 257 RIAA subpoenas put online (of a total of at least 911 filed so far) by the US District Court in Washington, DC.
