Recording Industry Sues Audiogalaxy

The major record companies and music publishers filed suit Friday against another online music service for copyright infringement, this time targeting a company that had tried to reduce piracy on its network.

The defendant is Audiogalaxy of Austin, Texas, a peer-to-peer network that has been operating for more than three years, and its owner, Michael Merhej. The network’s popularity has surged in recent months, with more than 3.5million users in March, according to the most recent study by Jupiter Media Metrix, a research firm.

Like Napster Inc., Kazaa and other peer-to-peer ventures sued for infringement, Audiogalaxy enables consumers to find and copy songs from one another’s computers through the Internet.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America and music publishers held their fire against Audiogalaxy for more than a year because it agreed to block their songs from being pirated.

But as the months passed, they grew increasingly skeptical about the company’s efforts.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New York, alleges that Audiogalaxy’s attempts to filter out copyrighted songs were “half-hearted” and “ineffectual.” Citing a recent ruling by a federal appeals panel in the Napster case, the lawsuit argues that Audiogalaxy has a duty to implement “a truly effective filtering system” once notified of copyright violations.

Said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs at the RIAA, “They repeatedly assured us that they would improve their filtering. They haven’t done so. At all.”

Merhej could not be reached for comment Friday.

Audiogalaxy has been a full-service music site, distributing promotional material for artists and labels, reviewing digital music gear and providing links to Web sites selling CDs. According to the lawsuit, the company also operated a peer-to-peer network similar to Napster’s, setting up central computers to guide users to free downloads.

The network goes beyond Napster’s in several respects--it’s better organized and more flexible, enabling people to find songs even on the computers of users not connected to the Net at the moment.

Audiogalaxy also recommends more music to download based on what a user searches for, a practice that potentially fuels the downloading of unauthorized files.

Although peer-to-peer services have yet to be ruled illegal by nature, the federal courts granted a pretrial injunction last year against Napster’s free service. An appeals panel later ruled that Napster needed to remain shut down until it had done everything technically feasible to stop piracy.