Not content with destroying Napster, the recording industry is now going after Aimster, a similar file-sharing service.
Yesterday representatives from all the major record companies including EMI, Sony, BMG and Universal, filed a lawsuit against Aimster in a New York court alleging that the service allows for the exchange of copyrighted material beyond music.
Aimster is a more dangerous version of Napster in that it allows users to source movies, software and pictures, as well as audio. It sits atop AOL's instant messaging service and works by encouraging users to share files with their "buddy lists".
AOL Time Warner is expected to file a separate suit, which would name Warner Music, New Line Studios and HBO because Aimster also allows for video file swapping.
The suit opens another potential front in the music industry's battle to keep control of the flow of copyrighted material on the internet, and could end up being as big as the high-profile Napster court case.
Earlier this week Aimster lost out on a domain name battle with AOL Time Warner and has been told it has to hand over its aimster.com, aimstertv.com and aimstertv.net domains because they infringe on AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM) trademark. However, Aimster said it was going to appeal against the domain name decision.
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