Two people in Washington state have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally downloading copyrighted music over the Internet.

The copyright infringement suits were filed in Seattle and Tacoma after the RIAA obtained the names of the individuals from their Internet service providers. The suit names a woman from Tenino and a man from Redmond, among more than two dozen lawsuits filed around the country, including three in Oregon.

The RIAA said the music was distributed using P2P services such as LimeWire. Record companies filed a lawsuit against the operators of LimeWire last fall, but the service continues to be available, calling itself "the fastest P2P file sharing program on the planet."

LimeWire's Web site notes the difference between legal and illegal file sharing using its service:

"LimeWire is legal software, but it is illegal for you to use LimeWire to share copyrighted files without permission."

In late 2005, Seattle-based Shared Media Licensing signed a deal with LimeWire and London's Magnatune record label to distribute works by Magnatune artists.

Here's a story looking at different views on P2P file sharing.