Soulseek is one the greatest music sharing communities that most of the world has never heard of. Covering all genres, Soulseek is an active network specializing in electronic music, where many of the members are musicians themselves. The music industry, however, sees the filesharing application as a threat, and will go after Soulseek in court.

Last week we reported that French record labels were going after four file-sharing applications, including Limewire and the BitTorrent client Vuze. Now, just days later, two other French organizations are to continue this crackdown and sue Soulseek.

SACEM, the French association for music producers and SCPP, which represents record labels including Universal, EMI, BMG, Warner have filed a complaint against the filesharing application.

The industry bodies argue that Soulseek, an application created by former Napster programmer Nir Arbel, is designed to permit unauthorized access to copyrighted works. According to a French law adopted in 2006, distributing such software is an offense that can lead to a 3 year jail sentence, as well as a fine up to 300,000 euros.

While Soulseek can be used to share any type of file, it is almost exclusively used to share music. Soulseek has a multitude of sub-communities, each dedicated to their chosen musical genres. The members can be incredibly passionate and many of them are experts in their field. Although mainstream music is available, the majority of the files shared on the network are underground independent music.

On the Soulseek website, it is clearly stated that the intention of their application is not to infringe copyright. Instead, it aims “to help unsigned and/or independent artists find a place in the ever-growing music industry, in a place where discussion and the creation of music can take place.”

Similar to other music sharing communities such as the BitTorrent sites What.cd and Waffles.fm, many members are artists themselves, who share their music freely. True to this spirit, members of the Soulseek community founded Soulseek Records (or SLSK Records), a non-profit netlabel where artists publish their music for free, under a Creative Commons license.

Instead of supporting this creative platform, the French music industry continues its witch-hunt, effectively killing their own business. If they are successful, this case, or the lawsuits against the other four p2p clients, will undoubtedly impact other filesharing applications.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Les producteurs indépendants ont eu le feu vert de la justice française pour poursuivre en France les éditeurs de Vuze (anciennement Azureus), Shareaza (en fait son hébergeur Sourceforge) et Limewire. Les trois ont décidé de faire appel de la décision donnant compétence aux tribunaux de l'hexagone, mais cette première victoire purement procédurale a donné envie à l'industrie musicale d'étendre son action. La SCPP qui représente les majors de l'industrie du disque, et la Sacem qui représentent les auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique, auraient ainsi décidé de poursuivre Soulseek.

Seven Hollywood studios including Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and Disney have teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. iiNet is accused of doing little to stop its subscribers from sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. The ISP denies the accusations.

iiNet, one of Australia’s largest ISPs with over 1,400 staff, was the first company in the country to offer DSL speeds over 1.5 Mbit/s to the regular consumer market, and now offers speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s. These relatively healthy speeds have proven attractive to iiNet’s customers and in common with subscribers at other ISPs, many have been utilizing their bandwidth by sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. Seven Hollywood studios are so incensed they are now sueing iiNet.

Today, through an AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) press release, seven studios - Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network, announced that they are to sue iiNet for copyright infringement.

The companies state that they are suing iiNet for “failing to take reasonable steps, including enforcing its own terms and conditions, to prevent known unauthorized use of copies of the companies’ films and TV programs by iiNet’s customers via its network.”

Adrianne Pecotic, Executive Director of AFACT said that the studios were forced to sue, since iiNet failed to take action against its customers who the studios claim are committing copyright infringement. Chris Chard, Managing Director of Roadshow Entertainment, claims their titles Happy Feet, No Reservation and I am Legend had all been pirated by iiNet customers using BitTorrent.

The studios want iiNet to disconnect infringers, but up to now, iiNet has refused to do so. Mark White, chief operating officer at iiNet told APC that his company would consult with the Internet Industry Association (IIA) to formulate a response.

“Our view is pretty straightforward. We don’t condone or support piracy in any form, and people who choose to pirate content should face the force of the law,” he said. “This is an industry issue, and we’ve been talking with the IIA, and we’ll work with them in terms of handling it.”

iiNet’s CEO Michael Malone said that the company disputes AFACT’s claims that they refused to do anything about the problem, telling Computerworld, “They send us a list of IP addresses and say ‘this IP address was involved in a breach on this date’. We look at that say ‘well what do you want us to do with this? We can’t release the person’s details to you on the basis of an allegation and we can’t go and kick the customer off on the basis of an allegation from someone else’. So we say ‘you are alleging the person has broken the law; we’re passing it to the police. Let them deal with it’.”

Of course, it is not unusual for movie studios, copyright holders and commentators to skim over the details in claiming that it’s trivial to kill copyright infringement, it absolutely is not. Just this week, Mike Mulligan of Jupiter Research said in a piece entitled “Why Music Can’t ‘Just Be Free’”, that all P2P developers (and presumably ISPs in this case) have to do is “support their claims off innocence by embedding filtering mechanisms into their apps.” TorrentFreak wrote to Mike offering to present precise details of his suggestions to Vuze, LimeWire, Shareaza and Morpheus but, unsurprisingly, there has been no response.

The problem is clearly not lost on Michael Malone: “I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it.”

The legal action against iiNet was filed in Australia’s Federal Court on November 20th (today), and the proceedings will continue December 20th 2008.

Post from: TorrentFreak