The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) obtained a subpoena at the U.S District Court of Columbia and ordered hosting provider WhoisGuard to hand over all identifying information related to the BitTorrent site TorrentHound.net. The requested information includes the individual’s IP-address and e-mail address. 

BitTorrent sites provide a peer-to-peer system through which copyright protected work such as music can be exchanged between users. As a result of the torrent sites, the online copyright infringements seem to increase according to RIAA. RIAA claims BitTorrent “is responsible for approximately 50% of the industry’s global peer to peer piracy problem”. 

Last summer, RIAA also requested information about the domain name holders of the torrent  websites LimeTorrents, BitSnoop and Monova. However, RIAA has not taken any notable action against these domain name holders. Therefore, it remains unclear what RIAA is planning to do with the information about TorrentHound. 

Reference: Torrentfreak.com 

By Deniece Teterissa