RIAA Agrees to Stop Suing Individuals & Work With ISPs

[The Straight Story]

RIAA Agrees to Stop Suing Individuals & Work With ISPs

Has the RIAA suddenly caught something of the Christmas spirit?

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal the despotic, libel happy organisation has said it will be changing tactics from now on and dropping its ruthless pursuit of individuals in favour of working directly with ISPs and educating users.


Without going into overly specific detail the RIAA explained that under its new approach it will look to tie-up as many agreements with ISPs as possible. The consequences being that when a user is seen to download music illegally they will either be sent a notice from the ISP or a forwarded note from the RIAA itself. Persistent offenders may still face charges, but in reality the more likely outcome would be for the ISP to cut off their Internet access it added.

As you might expect, details of which ISPs the RIAA would be working with were not disclosed but Virgin Media has previously shown it is willing to work with the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) while Be has repeatedly told them where to stick it.

In essence then this would seem a rather good thing and an end to the draconian mailings sent out to unsuspecting hockey moms and Joe six packs (to use something of a Palinism - scary woman) demanding 10s of thousands of dollars.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/news/2008/12/22/RIAA-Agrees-to-Stop-Suing-Individuals---Work-With-ISPs/p1

[RoyGBiv]

1. ISPs who agree to this ...

... are slitting their own throats and ours along with them.

Apparently fewer and fewer people remember the Internet censorship fights of the 90s, but this is precisely the kind of thing they were about.

ISPs are "pass-thru" service providers. They are not responsible for the content of their users and cannot be expected to be "Internet cops." This is an attempt to make ISPs "Internet cops" that monitor all our transmissions.

And, FWIW, RIAA has been lying about this for some time. They claim they already stopped doing this, but they haven't.

[MazeRat7]

2. This is going to be worse... Now the RIAA is their own enforcement arm...

and the average user, who may be caught up in their dragnet, has no due process.

Peace,
MZr7