P2P update: New lawsuits, etc.

Seven hundred fifty-three more Americans will soon be hearing from the RIAA. The total number of lawsuits to date differs from report to report. P2PNet and MTV say around 9,100 people have been sued (the former makes a number of interesting anti-RIAA points), Australian Financial Review puts the number at 6,500. Meanwhile, one very popular P2P service, iMesh (an Israel-based service whose software was downloaded 715,000 times in just one week in Feb.), is currently enjoying approval by media companies. Why? Because it's working on using its file-sharing technology to sell music, CNET reports. So is a soon-to-be-unveiled service called Mashboxx. So, for now anyway, users of these services won't get sued. But if they're also buying cheap music from a Russian site called AllofMP3.com, they might want to know it's under criminal investigation, according to another CNET report (for more, see "Cheaper online tunes"). In related news, the UK is the No. 1 country in the world in downloading TV shows, the BBC reports. The Washington Post recently ran a great big-picture piece about pro- and anti-P2P arguments the US Supreme Court will be hearing later this month, including those about other technologies file-sharers use (e.g., turning radio broadcasts into computer files that can be burned onto CDs). A lot of companies, technologies, and consumers will be affected by this decision. "Hundreds of existing products could be threatened, [these communities] say. And they fear that new products, and early funding, will die in the crib," the Post reports.