At the same time the House Judiciary Committee was sending the full House a bill calling for jail for peer-to-peer file swappers, Altnet – which sells music and other digital products through peer-to-peer networks – has sued the Recording Industry Association of America, accusing the music trade group of infringing Altnet's FastTrack technology patent while trying to enforce copyrights in the P2P community.
"We've exhausted every means of trying to work with these defendants and those they represent to patiently encourage and positively develop the P2P distribution channel," Altnet chief executive Kevin Bermeister said in a formal statement after the filing. "We cannot stand by and allow them to erode our business opportunity by the wholesale infringement of our rights."
The Brilliant Digital Entertainment subsidiary also named copyright company Overpeer and MediaDefender in the suit. As it also happens, AltNet and its parent are joint venture partners with KaZaA parent Sharman Networks, which has been trying and failing for years to get the music industry to let AltNet sell authorized versions of songs through KaZaA. KaZaA and other P2P networks use FastTrack as an underlying technology.
Altnet is accusing Overpeer and MediaDefender of using unauthorized versions of KaZaA and thus use an AltNet patent without permission. Overpeer is a company known to post millions of false or corrupted files on KaZaA and other P2P networks as part of their anti-piracy business, and these files in turn jam the networks with requests that obstruct genuine downloading, according to AltNet's filing.
Overpeer's parent Loudeye rejected AltNet's claims "We vigorously deny these claims," said Loudeye's Overpeer chief Marc Morgenstern in a statement, "and find them to be completely baseless and without merit."
MediaDefender produces a software program called PeerProtector, by which parents can block their children from getting "offensive or illegal material" from P2P networks. MediaDefender has not yet responded to the AltNet suit.
