U.S. court orders website to remove "free songs" claim

• MP3DownloadCity led consumers to believe that they would not be sued if they paid $24.95 for the tutorial with claims like "Rest assured that File-Sharing is 100 percent legal," the FTC charged.
• Recording companies and movie studios have sued thousands of peer-to-peer users for copyright infringement over the past several years, and the Supreme Court ruled in June that peer-to-peer makers could be sued if they induce users to copy material without permission.
• A U.S. court in California ordered MP3DownloadCity.com to temporarily remove its claims as it considers the FTC's request for a permanent ban.
• The individual named in the FTC's complaint, Cashier Myricks, could not be reached for comment.
• An FTC official said the agency would try to get Myricks to return the money he collected from thousands of users.
• The FTC also may try to get Myricks to state more clearly that he is selling a tutorial and not actual download software, staff attorney Matthew Daynard said.
• "The main point is we don't want people getting sued over copyrighted material," Daynard said.
• The Center for Democracy and Technology, a consumer rights group, asked the FTC to investigate the Web site in March, along with another Web site making similar claims, MyMusicInc.com.
• "It promotes copyright infringement and it also undermines the efforts to develop a legitimate market because it sows confusion about what's legal and what's not," CDT staff attorney David Sohn said.
• MyMusicInc.com now states that sharing copyrighted material without permission is illegal.