Record industry picking the wrong fight... again, again

The music industry's antipiracy efforts took an embarrassing turn on Tuesday when the Recording Industry Association of America acknowledged that it has erroneously sent dozens of copyright infringement notices.

The RIAA admitted that a temporary worker was responsible for firing off legal notifications last week that invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act without confirming that any copyrighted files were actually being offered for download. "We have sent two dozen withdrawal notices - all appear related to this particular temp," the RIAA said in a statement. "We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

On Monday, the RIAA withdrew a DMCA notice to Penn State University's astronomy and astrophysics department. Sent during Penn State's final exams, it prompted the central computing office at the campus to threaten the department with having its internet connection severed unless the infringing material was removed.

The problem, however, was that no infringing file existed on the department's computer. The RIAA's automated program apparently confused two separate pieces of information - a legal MP3 and a directory named "usher" - and concluded there was an illegal copy of a song by US singer Usher.

In a second incident, Speakeasy, a national broadband provider, said the RIAA had apologised for sending it a cease-and-desist letter alleging illegal activity on a subscriber's FTP site devoted to the Commodore Amiga computer. The RIAA's form letter sent to Speakeasy last Thursday alleged the Amigascne.org site illegally "offers approximately 0 sound files for download. Many of these files contain recordings owned by our member companies, including songs by such artists as Creed."

The errors represent a black eye for the RIAA's latest efforts against piracy, which rely on automated crawlers to scour the internet in an attempt to find material that is being distributed in a way that violates federal copyright law. The RIAA refuses to disclose what techniques its crawlers use, but the group appears to employ companies such as MediaForce and MediaDefender. Its copyright enforcers are not required to listen to an allegedly infringing MP3 file in its entirety, the RIAA has acknowledged.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy would not say who the temporary employee worked for, whether the person had been fired or who else had received DMCA notices.

"We do not discuss employment details, other than to say, 'We are taking appropriate action against this individual,'" Lamy said. "As we said, 24 withdrawal notices have been sent, all apparently due to mistakes this temp employee made." Just as the RIAA doesn't publicise the names of whom it sends cease-and-desist notices in order to protect their privacy, Lamy said, the group will not publicise this temp's name.

While the RIAA said that only 24 faulty letters have been sent, a comparison of the tracking numbers inserted in the Penn State and Speakeasy notices shows they differ by 136 numbers. That difference implies that hundreds of additional notifications may have been fired off around the same time, though not necessarily by the same RIAA worker.

Speakeasy said Tuesday that it accepted the RIAA's apology.

"Speakeasy routinely monitors abuse allegations from outside parties and forwards notices to its subscribers when appropriate. In this particular case, our abuse department notified the subscriber of the RIAA inquiry and Speakeasy simultaneously contacted the RIAA to question the '0 files found' portion of the original letter," a spokeswoman said. "Speakeasy is satisfied with the RIAA's timely response."

Kurt Hoffman, Speakeasy's chief operating officer, said the company believed RIAA's notice to be an honest mistake and that Speakeasy will not pursue legal action.