Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet, Attorney General John Ashcroft says. Agents raided residences in Texas, New York and Wisconsin early on Wednesday and seized computers that they suspect were involved in a nationwide file-trading network. The raids marked a sharp escalation of the years-long legal battle surrounding unauthorised copying over peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks. Until now, the Justice Department has only pursued elite groups of hackers who steal and distribute movies, music and software before their official...

They used to say "home taping" was killing music, now it's meant to be internet downloaders. But the real pirates these days are crime bosses - and the rewards are plentiful. The net has given rise to many novel ways of doing business but the methods of the Recording Industry Association of America has got every twisted e-commerce scheme beaten. Last month, the association began suing hundreds of its customers. For the RIAA - which represents the major US recording companies - this makes perfect sense. The people being sued are sharing music with millions of others via peer-to-peer networks...

Despite aggressive challenges by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to on-line music suppliers like the defunct Napster, two-thirds of Internet users in the US who copy digital music on-line say they don't care if the music is copyrighted, according to the report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The report, entitled "Music Downloading, File-sharing and Copyright," also found that 27 percent of users who download music files are concerned about copyright, while 6 percent said they don't know enough or don't have a position on the issue. The number of users who share files on-line and...