The music industry’s fight against illegal downloading has taken a new turn.
The good news is that the Recording Industry Association of America will no longer be directly going after pirates.
The bad news is that Internet Service Providers will now be doing the enforcing. According an article on CNet, the RIAA will stop suing those who only download a handful of songs, but still plan to file lawsuits on those who download massive amounts of files. “My music industry sources say that the RIAA will continue to file lawsuits against the most egregious offenders–the person who ‘downloads 5,000 or 6,000 songs a month is still going to get sued,’ a source at a major record company told me,” the article read.
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Under the new plan, the RIAA will alert an ISP to any user found to be downloading a lot of files. Sanctions could include everything from a limiting of bandwidth to a suspension of service.
Not everyone is pleased with the announcement, and some are worried about the possibility of people being stripped of their Internet access without being convicted of an actual crime.
“This is very troubling,”CindyCohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated. “Creating lists of people who can’t get Internet access based on allegations of breaking a law that hasn’t been evaluated in a court of law. It’s good that that the (RIAA) wants to stop suing individuals but they should haven’t done it in the first place. I’d be especially concerned if the music labels can get you kicked off one ISP and then arrange to get you kicked off others, or the creation of blacklists. That’s certainly what our fears have been about private legal enforcement regimen.”
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To read the article in its entirety, click here.
