In the lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan federal court, the music giants claim that the ISPs, including AT&T Broadband, Cable and Wireless, Sprint, Advanced Network Services and a unit of WorldCom use their routing services to allow customers access a central location, where they can illegally download thousands of music files.
They also allege that some songs were distributed through the Listen4ever.com site even before they were commercially released. The labels are seeking a court order obliging the ISPs to block internet communications to and from the site.
The suit claims that “Listen4ever has clearly located itself in China to avoid the ambit of US copyright law.” The web site’s domain name was registered in January 2002 to an individual in Tianjin, China. The record labels said that, although any indication of who owns the web site is “strictly absent”, it is written entirely in English and mainly focuses on US works.
An AT&T spokeswoman told the New York Times that it is the first time the company has been asked to block access to a foreign web site. It blocked access to the site by Saturday night, according to a report by BBC News.