P2P scam settlement: too little, too late

Filed in archive Legal on May 26, 2006

Cashier Myricks, Jr., owner of mp3downloadcity.com and other sites selling P2P services, settled a lawsuit brought by the U.S. federal trade commission (FTC) for the whopping sum of $15,240. The FTC charged that the site falsely claimed that using P2P software to download files was totally legal, when in fact the downloading of copyrighted content can be illegal.

I previously covered this topic in P2P deception sites - scam operators or master marketers? The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The fine essentially represents the full value of the $25 paid by the site's 611 customers. It is far too little as there is no punitive fine and other operators of such sites have literally earned millions of dollars.

It also is far too late as most similar web sites long ago removed such claims (not hard to do, just delete a few words) and continue to act deceptively, as their customers believe they are buying P2P software or a legal download subscription service.