Diamond and RIAA agree to drop lawsuits
"Diamond Multimedia and our RioPort subsidiary are pleased to bring an end to this legal dispute as we move forward with the music industry on the development of secure e-commerce music offerings through the Secure Digital Music Initiative," said Ron Moore, General Counsel of Diamond Multimedia, in a statement.
Last October, the RIAA filed a suit against Diamond after the multimedia hardware maker announced it would release a digital music player. The RIAA feared that such a product would promote the pirating of copyrighted music.
Instead, the two have worked together on the Secure Digital Music Initiative, an alliance of more than 100 members, which aims to curtail commonplace piracy through a secure distribution mechanism. "Diamond has played a constructive, important role within SDMI, especially in the last few months as we raced to meet the extremely ambitious timetable to adopt the initial portable device specification," said Cary Sherman, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the RIAA.
The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies also signed the agreement to drop pending lawsuits.
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