The "John Doe" lawsuits filed cite individuals for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet via unauthorized peer-to-peer services such as LimeWire and Kazaa, In addition to the "John Doe" litigations, the major music companies filed lawsuits against 105 named defendants. Named defendant suits were filed in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Wisconsin.
"The end of the year is an especially important time for the music community, and an especially fortunate time for music fans, with a great slate of new releases in stores," said Cary Sherman, President, RIAA. "We must do everything to protect the integrity of the marketplace. That means educating fans about steering clear of pirated product and continuing to enforce our rights to send a clear message that stealing music will bring consequences. At stake is the music industry's ability to invest in the next generation of music and a chance for legal online music services to flourish."
The NPD Group, a provider of consumer and retail information, says that from the time of the Supreme Court decision against Grokster in June, to October, the number of U.S. households that downloaded at least one song from an illegal P2P service declined by 11 percent (from 6.4 million households in June to 5.7 million in October).
On June 27, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of the major record companies and motion picture studios in their case against Grokster by ruling that providers of file-sharing technology may be held liable for their users' actions. In the wake of this decision, the RIAA reportedly issued cease-and-desist letters in September to several of the top peer-to-peer services.
Prior to the Supreme Court's decision, NPD had noted an upward trend in the use of file sharing services to download music throughout 2004 and 2005, but that pattern reversed after the decision was handed down and some P2P sites began to close or shift marketing and business tactics.
These numbers are, however, disputed by Eric Garland, CEO of media measurement firm BigChampagne, according to an Internetnews.com article.
