Audiogalaxy sued by music industry for failed filters

The complaint accuses Audiogalaxy of "willfully and intentionally" encouraging and facilitating "millions of individual, anonymous users to copy and distribute infringing copyrighted works by the millions, if not billions."

The complaint further states that, "With functions such as the ability to download entire songs and albums, cover artwork, and software, as well as a peer-to-peer file-sharing function, Audiogalaxy's system is even more egregious than that of Napster."

Matt Oppenheim, Senior Vice President, Business and Legal Affairs of the RIAA, said that the litigation was a last resort after numerous out-of-court warnings to Audiogalaxy were ignored or resulted in half-hearted attempts to fix the problem.

"Audiogalaxy and Napster are cut from the same cloth," said Oppenheim. "Audiogalaxy is profiting by providing its users a library of pirated music, including today's most popular hits. Though claiming fealty to copyrights, Audiogalaxy continues to offer up virtually all of the music we told them should be excluded. The firm's sieve-like filter has been totally ineffective."

Like Napster’s original model, Audiogalaxy appears to operate on a centralised structure, meaning that users must access the Audiogalaxy server to identify what tracks are available from other users. This gives the site an ability to control the network’s use, which is not possible in a decentralised model. The decentralised approach is taken by Audiogalaxy’s bigger rival, KaZaA.