The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Wednesday it had collected another victory in its war against illegal online file sharing of copyrighted material, this time over Usenet.com, a service that enables newsgroup users to share and distribute content, including music files.

The federal court ruling, in the Southern District Court of New York, arrived Tuesday and comes more than a year and a half after the RIAA first sued Usenet.com in October 2007. According to the court ruling, Judge Harold Baer Jr. found Usenet.com in violation of various copyright laws and turned the case over to a court magistrate to determine the next course of action, be it a fine or a total shutdown of Usenet.

Unlike peer-to-peer services such as BitTorrent, Usenet hosts the user content on servers. Because of that architecture, the RIAA was able prove Usenet violated copyrights.

"This decision is another example of courts recognizing the value of copyrighted music and taking action against companies and individuals who are engaging in wide-scale infringement. We hope that other bad actors who are engaging in similar activity will take note of this decisive opinion," said Steven M. Marks, executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA, in the RIAA's statement on the verdict.

The RIAA in recent months has shifted the way it attacks the problem of illegal downloading, saying it will look to prosecute the enablers -- sites such as Usenet.com, for example -- rather than individual file sharers. Of course, that didn't stop the RIAA from winning $1.92 million from a 32-year-old Minnesota mother of four last month -- a hit of $80,000 per each of the 24 songs she was said to have illegally downloaded.

Illegal file sharing has been in the news quite a bit lately, from the RIAA cases to a guilty verdict for Sweden-based The Pirate Bay, formerly one of the world's most popular BitTorrent sites. After losing their bid for a retrial, The Pirate Bay's founders sold the site and all of its assets to a software developer, which said it will develop a legal content downloading system based on The Pirate Bay's platform. But given the precedent -- Napster's unsuccessful relaunch as a legal music subscription service -- it's hard to muster much optimism for The Pirate Bay's future.
DeathKnell Reviewed by DeathKnell on . RIAA Collects Another Victory, This Time Over Usenet The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Wednesday it had collected another victory in its war against illegal online file sharing of copyrighted material, this time over Usenet.com, a service that enables newsgroup users to share and distribute content, including music files. The federal court ruling, in the Southern District Court of New York, arrived Tuesday and comes more than a year and a half after the RIAA first sued Usenet.com in October 2007. According to the court Rating: 5