CBS and it’s online affiliate CNET have found themselves in hot water as of late, after a number of music artists have filed suit against the company, claiming they’ve lost millions in revenue over illegal downloading.Hit the jump for more details..
A number of popular rappers have filed a lawsuit against CBS Interactive and its website, CNET.
Rappers like The Ying Yang Twins, 2 Live Crew, JT Money, The Force MDS, J-Shin and singing group Pretty Ricky filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California yesterday (May 3rd).
The lawsuit claims CBS Interactive’s website CNET was the main distributor of the LimeWire peer2peer sharing software, which was been downloaded over 220 million times.
In addition to LimeWire, CNET helped distribute such popular programs as Morpheus (174 million downloads), iMesh (115 million downloads) and FrostWire (32 million downloads).
The rappers claim CBS made massive amounts of revenue from the P2P providers on a “pay per download” basis, in addition to the revenue generated by advertisements shown on the download screen.
“Defendants are liable as vicarious infringers for the copyright infringement committed via P2P client software that Defendants created, distributed and promoted, including LimeWire and others,” the lawsuit claims.
The rappers seek millions in damages, attorney fees and court costs.
