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RIAA seeks customer information from domain firm in Grooveshark v2 chase

By | Published on Wednesday 1 July 2015

Grooveshark

LA-based domain registrar Namecheap has been ordered to hand over the personal details of one of its customers, a person suspected of being involved in the ongoing attempts to keep Grooveshark – or at least a music service using that name – online.

As previously reported, soon after the controversial streaming music site Grooveshark was finally forced offline at the end of April, as part of a settlement between the major labels and the site’s founders, who had lost a legal battle with the record industry, a clone of the service soon popped up at another domain.

The new site was run by a third party, though someone who claimed to have once worked for the now defunct streaming company. Said person claimed to have grabbed most of Grooveshark’s content before it was shutdown, though some reckon the new service was actually built on the back of other different piracy set-ups.

But either way, the record industry didn’t especially want another unlicensed music service online using the now infamous Grooveshark name. And the labels have been busy domain grabbing ever since, trying to force domain registrars to cancel any URLs being used by the new piracy platform. As much previously reported, some domain registrars and registries will cancel domains based on a complaint from a copyright owner, others demand a court order before taking any action.

But as soon as one domain is blocked, the service re-emerges elsewhere on the net, and the record industry still doesn’t know who is behind Grooveshark v2. To that end, according to BHN, the Recording Industry Association Of America went to court in New York last week asking for an injunction forcing web firms providing services to the new Grooveshark to reveal the name, contact and payment information of their customer or customers. And the judge granted that order.

Namecheap, one of the companies targeted in the legal action, has since suspended the domain in question, though we hear that Grooveshark v2 already has an alternative web address to use. Whether the information that the domain registrar is now obliged to provide the RIAA helps the trade group directly target the individual behind the new version of the copyright infringing streaming service, well that remains to be seen



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