Johnny Deep, CEO of Aimster said: “We’re asking the court for a ruling that says it would be wrong to sue us because we’re doing nothing wrong.” The company received a letter from Napster’s nemesis, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), warning Aimster that if it did not block the sharing of copyright protected music files, the RIAA would sue.
Aimster, which has over 4 million users, encrypts all transmissions on its network, making it futile to monitor the activities of users, who share their files with those on their IM “buddy lists”, as opposed to Napster, where one user’s files are potentially available to all other Napster users. Aimster's legal argument is that, as a private communication service, any attempt to monitor member activities would breach users’ privacy and that breaking the encryption would itself be a violation of US law.
Following the injunction against Napster that caused it to begin filtering unauthorised music files on its service, the number of downloads has fallen by 36% in the past month, according to internet music research firm Webnoize. In April, Napster users downloaded 1.59 billion tracks, down from 2.49 billion in March.