May 18, 2013
The record industry is getting the results it wants.
The Recording Industry Association of America says that its legal pursuit of four college students for allegedly downloading songs illegally has prompted other music-swapping services to pull the plug.
It's reporting that 18 sites have gone off-line since the lawsuits were filed in April.
The association says it has reached financial settlements with the four-defendants - students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Michigan Technological University. They were accused of storing more than one million songs on central servers and making them available through their schools' high-speed Internet networks.
An association executive says the record companies are making it clear that the distribution of copyrighted works without permission is illegal and can have consequences.
