SUE 'EM ALL July 21 2000 dotmusic.com Surprise! The RIAA files suit against another MP3-related company. This time, the Recording Industry Association of America has teamed up with the Motion Picture Association of America to gun down file sharing and directory system Scour.com. The service, which has been quoted by Shawn Fanning as his impetus for creating Napster, indexes files including tracks by Britney Spears and Eminem or trailers of upcoming movie X-Men. But it also offers a Napster-like media-trading application named Scour Exchange (or SX), which enables fans to exchange music and movies. The software was recently the subject of controversy when users discovered security flaws which could allow their hard drives to be searched further than just multimedia files. The suit, coming from a whole host of movie and music companies including Virgin Records, Motown and Interscope, states that Scour "actively participates in, facilitates and encourages" piracy. A statement from the RIAA continues that the files traded through Scour "are produced from the blood, sweat and tears of artists who should be compensated for their work. What these companies are doing is no different than if they provided people with a way to shoplift CDs from stores." What is surprising, however, is that big business should go for Scour, which has prided itself in an industry-friendly image; its most famous investor is former "superagent" and ex-Disney president Michael Ovitz. Scour President Dan Rodrigues says that prior to the suit, the company had "licensed content agreements from Miramax and Hollywood Records, both of whom are plaintiffs in the lawsuit." It also held what he describes as "productive conversations just this week with Sony, Warner and BMG regarding establishing business relations." The music and movie industries are expected to pursue damages of $150,000 per infringed work: an amount that could total millions. comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion [about i-drive] writing index thoughts dotmusic index musicbank index Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Contact me: mail@tobyslater.com back to top back to home page

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