Record Industry Blasts Pirates Again

Some of the lyrics may have changed, but the song remains the same.

The Recording Industry Association of America said Wednesday it had filed copyright-infringement suits against 532 individuals it accuses of illegally sharing music online.

The move continues an initiative the music industry trade association launched last fall, when it filed suit against 261 people it alleged had let others copy their music libraries over free peer-to-peer file-sharing services.

But following a court decision that went against the RIAA, the trade group has had to change its tactics. Instead of finding out the names of suspected file sharers from the individuals' Internet service providers, then filing copyright-infringement lawsuits against the named parties, the RIAA this time around is filing lawsuits against the 532 John Does first, then seeking subpoenas from judges to learn the names afterward.

Despite the change, the music industry says it is as committed as ever to using such lawsuits to stem online file sharing, which the music industry has blamed, along with conventional CD piracy, as threats to its current and future livelihood.

"Our campaign against illegal file sharing is not missing a beat," RIAA President Cary Sherman told reporters on a conference call Wednesday.

The music industry has suffered a measure of bad press as a result of the lawsuits -- the RIAA getting portrayed as a Simon Legree, for example, after one of the first-round defendants, theoretically liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars, turned out to be a 12-year-old girl.

But RIAA executives expressed happiness with the lawsuit program Wednesday, saying that the publicity surrounding them -- including reports of defendants settling cases for thousands of dollars -- had helped arrest the growth of illegal file sharing, and perhaps cut its usage in the U.S.