RIAA to halt lawsuits, cozy up to ISPs instead

[Infinite_Vision]

Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:18AM EST

At last, the music industry admits what we've known for years: That filing music-swapping lawsuits against teenagers, little old ladies, and corpses is a fool's errand (not to mention an expensive headache for the defendants). But don't worry—the RIAA has something new up its sleeves.

The new strategy (as reported by the Wall Street Journal): If the music industry finds out that you're swapping music files online, it'll send an e-mail to your ISP (agreements have already hashed out agreements with "some" unnamed service providers, apparently), which will in turn forward the message to you—probably with a little "P.S." asking you to stop. [update: CNET has a copy of the RIAA's form letter to ISPs.]

If you don't stop, well ... your service provider probably won't sue you, but it might slow down your broadband connection, or cut off your service altogether.

So, why has the RIAA changed the play? Well, maybe it's been looking at reports like this one from the NPD Group, which shows that U.S. CD sales continue to slide, while the number of tunes shared via P2P sites continues to increase, despite all the litigation.

And then there's the disastrous headlines, as the RIAA relentlessly tracked down and sued tens of thousands of alleged music pirates. Among them: Kids, octogenarians, and a few dead people.

Reaction to the news? Mixed. Engadget's headline reads (in part): "RIAA finds its soul," with the story noting that while the RIAA reserves the right to go after "heavy uploaders or repeat offenders ... it appears that single mothers are in the clear."

All Things Digital has a darker outlook, speculating that ISPs—which "care about the cost of moving lots of data around … [and] want to make money by selling, renting, or just offering up Hollywood's movies and TV shows to subscribers"—might be more than content to "cut off file-sharers … [or] simply [charge] heavy file-sharers a lot of money."

And here's another possibility, courtesy of yours truly: Say your ISP catches you sharing tunes via P2P. No problem—download away! But when you get your next cable bill, you'll find the itemized songs added to your monthly charge, kind of like an iTunes bill.

Call it the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy.

P.S. Make no mistake—just because the RIAA has stopped filing new music-swapping lawsuits doesn't mean that it's dropped the existing ones, according to the Journal. Quite the contrary.

Link: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/31678

[irefay]

meh, RIAA can lick these nuts.

[dMog]

meh, RIAA can lick these nuts.

they will lick...but for a fee..... :dance2:

[myidisbb]

the isps that are doing the monthly (insane) caps are the ones that will cozy u with the riaa and mpaa. this will only be usa. europeans will still be sued by riaa european versions.

[dMog]

the isps that are doing the monthly (insane) caps are the ones that will cozy u with the riaa and mpaa. this will only be usa. europeans will still be sued by riaa european versions.

here in Canada they were planning draconian legislation but so far it is still not made into law

[AshTheGamer]

In the UK.

They say you will get 3 warning's.

1st: Letter to your house saying to stop.

2nd: Letter to your house saying to stop and a 1 day suspension.

3rd: Letter to your house saying You have been banned from their ISP.

And your details about getting banned will be sent round to the other ISP's.

This started over a year ago and I have downloaded over 60gb of Illegal things and Not even the 1st warning.