Scoped sharing portals by Music Industry

The RIAA was granted subpoenas in the case involving 3 foreign file-sharing portals. The next step of the outfit will be to get the IP addresses and personal data of the websites' operators.Despite the fact that the budget of Recording Industry Association of America has suffered dramatic changes recently, it had no impact on the outfit's intention to stop piracy. This September, for example, it has sent more than 800,000 takedown requests to Google.


Now the anti-piracy outfit is pursuing three music download portals located across the world. The association has filed and obtained subpoenas from the court to receive the list of the IP addresses and e-mails of the sites' administrators. Two of the targeted portals are very well-known in Latin America for offering external links to the services where users can download music. The last one is a Dutch-based private torrent tracker.

The Recording Industry Association of America has submitted letters to the WHOIS services, claiming that all of the targeted websites are facilitating copyright violation. The letter reads that the RIAA blames privacy services for hosting one of the three portals on its network. The portal, in its turn, is accused of offering direct links to the files containing sound recordings for others to download by famous artists whose works are protected by the copyright law.

The subpoenas required the services to reveal sensitive data sufficient to identify the infringers of the copyright law, including users' IP-addresses and e-mail addresses. Moreover, the music outfit asked the WHOIS services to block access to the infringing files, if this was possible. The Recording Industry Association of America officially asked for the services' immediate assistance in stopping the illegal activity of the portals. In particular, they demanded that they removed the infringing content from the system or blocked access to it. In addition, the RIAA asked to inform the website administrators of the illegality of their conduct.

In the meantime, it is unclear why the RIAA is targeting the foreign websites which are outside their jurisdiction. The industry experts suggest that the music outfit either takes decisions on its own (but this is unlikely) or helps its foreign colleagues (for instance, BREIN).