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RIAA gives up suing people
THE RIAA has finally woken up to the fact that its policy of spying on people and dragging them to court is not working.
The outfit has decided to stop suing people who download music and will instead try and take the ISPs to the cleaners.
The plus side of this strategy is that it is an easier target, the downside is that the ISPs have a lot more money and better lawyers.
It seems to be hoping that it can come to a deal before having to sue anyone. A spokesman said that it was working with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and leading ISPs on the new approach. Apparenly the RIAA has an agreement in principle with several ISPS on a voluntary graduated response program to copyright violations.
Basically this means that an ISP would notice that there was a lot of file-sharing traffic going on a line and take a series of escalating sanctions. Ultimately that could mean that punters get their accounts shut off.
The RIAA will now only sue people if they ignore the ISPs. So far the RIAA has sued 35,000 people for online music piracy since 2003.
According to AP the Electronic Frontier Foundation has welcomed the end to the lawsuit campaign calling it "long overdue" and a "failure."
But a spokeseff said it was more troubling that the RIAA is pressuring US ISPs into adopting some sort of 'three strikes' approach, similar to those it's been seeking in Europe.
This could lead to a banning of 20 per cent of Americans from the Internet, it warns. µ
L'Inq
AP
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Why should the ISP's have to provide actual bandwidth for the money they are getting? This means that you will still pay outrageous fees for internet connection and are restricted to several MB's per month. This looks like a win/win for the corporations. What's not for the ISP's to love in this plan?
Its just a back door way of getting past Internet Privacy.
Once its done, it can be used for other purposes as the precident is set.
about my previous comment: where did my newlines go? it's all a barely readable mess now :((
to riaa: Liar Liar pants on fire
RIAA Caught Lying About Stopping Lawsuits
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081221/1519113180.shtml
RIAA claim not to have filed new cases "for months" is false
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html#1104859189661357526
If the Riaa is successful in it's 3 strike approach it will only lead the masses to create a much more advanced file sharing system than Bittorrent.
And it will be a cold day in hell before they crack ISP's. they will stick to their "We're only providing an internet connection stance" and without Subpoenas for people's data they will clam up tighter than a snare drum.
I see this announcement as admitting they lost now that the precedent has been set in court that they cannot sue people for bittorrnt. It's game over for RIAA.
Remember the only people they have actually sued and won were people using Kazaa/Limewire type FS networks.