News

RIAA Abandoning P2P Lawsuits

The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA has decided to abandon its strategy of suing individual file sharers.  The music lobby group has sued more than 35,000 people since 2003.  Instead, the RIAA plans to focus on a three-strikes and you're out approach with ISPs that would involve terminating subscriber access after three warnings.

23 Comments

  1. So the RIAA are now the police and the judge?
    While I don’t think people should just download music without paying for it. (I’d rather see people ignoring music protected by the RIAA) I can’t agree to this kind of approach which shows how much the RIAA knows about the Internet and its importance in today’s society, and the need to help people that can’t access it to be able to.

  2. Why similar approach did not apppy to RIAA?
    If they sue three innocent people they should lose their lawyers… FOREVER.

  3. All they did…
    ….was sluff off their enforcement on to the ISP.

  4. Mass lawsuits are stopping, but terror will continue
    and your ISP will be your prosecutor and your judge now.

  5. NO I’M Sparticus
    and now they go for 3 strikes law your off the net getting ISPS to rat you out.
    FUNNY what would motivate the ISP to do that, you gonna sue them?
    and then get every user of that ISP pissed off.
    NOPE ISPS have to know that we would all hten get to gether collectively and id make a call that the isp then go an subpeona every user to show up and say:

    I’m Sparticus

  6. practicing the presence
    It will work as a fear tactic, but it won’t be any more effective than anything else so far. In fact I think it will be quite ineffective in the long run. The biggest question to me is, how wise is it for the RIAA to get even deeper into a technology they (as they have both shown and admitted) clearely don’t understand.

  7. Vincent Clement says:

    Stupid
    What is there to stop the RIAA from sending out bogus warning letters to ISPs? I can´t wait for the first lawsuit.

    The ISPs are stupid to agree this. The MPAA will be next followed by every ¨old school¨ media organization. The cost of the internet will go up. Wonderful.

  8. Michel Binette says:

    Disconnecting Internet, Cable and Phone ?
    There was a story in cyberpresse.ca last friday about Videotron already sending e-mails to there clients saying there ip were found on certain sites (P2P).

    The day they send me an e-mail like that will be the last day they have me as a customer, meaning out with internet, cable and phone (1 600$ a year).

    Let’s say 50% of people do the same thing. How long do you think Videotron will do the policing for big corporation if they can lose up to ±2 billions a year?

  9. Doesn’t seem like they really mean it…or perhaps “planning” means they’re looking into it in the future.

    According to Recording Industry vs The People website they’re still at it…

  10. 1 inevitability….
    There is 1 eventual and inevitable outcome to the tightening of the noose that the RIAA seeks, and that outcome is:

    Revolution.

    When people decide that they don’t want to follow the laws anymore, when people get pushed to the point of breaking, and the gov’t and corporations can no longer contain the problem, when the problem becomes the social norm, and they are just grasping for the “good ol days”, you have a revolution.

    And the market, the business, the industry will never be the same.

    X

  11. FALSE LAST WEEK THEY INSTITUTED 12 LAWSUITS
    FALSE LAST WEEK THEY INSTITUTED 12 LAWSUITS

  12. Marnie Tunay says:

    http://fakirscanada.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
    The RIAA has sued 35,000 people?? So, that’s where the money for those CD levys is going…
    Marnie Tunay
    Fakirs Canada

  13. True Colours
    Hmmmm… it seems that all these upstanding citizens above this email weren’t really upset with the RIAA suing people, they were upset that one day they might have to pay for their music! And here is the proof. Instead of celebrating the cessation of the RIAA prosecuting the lawsuits, they are crying about the ISP’s helping creators to earn a living by enforcing copyright law. I guess they could be called cheapskates or even thieves but, that would be kind. What they really are, are hypocrites. Luckily their day is coming to an end. Good riddance.

  14. Terry you sound like an idoit
    This isnt about people getting stuff for free or artist getting paid. Artist get most of the money from concerts not cd sales. No this about censorship and control. Its about being able to control what people do, when they can do it and how they do it. Including people who make there own stuff and put it on the internet. The reason they stop is because they were losing the butts in court and the very constitutionality of the lawsuits were coming into question. So now there trying to censor people another way. So Please Terry grow a brain stem.

  15. It is about being paid.
    I will assume that your misspelling of “idiot” was a typo. My guess is that you have a couple of thousand tunes on your computer that you did not pay for; perhaps you have some movies as well. You have put forward a self serving argument that will let you keep stealing without feeling guilty. I work with a band that is struggling to survive and in spite of multiple tours and millions of myspace “listens”, we live from month to month. Our CD sales are, according to our independent label, a tenth of what they would be if so much of our music was not illegally downloaded. We give away music all the time, but that is with our permission. When we invest a year of our lives and 50,000 dollars of our money into a project, just to break even, then, what is the point? To keep you happy? It is easy to turn this into the big bad “the man is trying to censor me” thing, but the fact is, my industry has been decimated by theft and we will fight back and we will win. I could probably grow another brain stem long before you ever grew a conscience.

  16. Music is business
    Maybe Terry your band sucks and that’s why you don’t make any money. Music is like any industry, making money is not a garantee. Stop crying and change band. Maybe GM and Chrysler should cry to the government because Japanese car steals customers from them !!!

  17. Downloading is hurting Indie Music???
    I find that hard to believe. Most music you see on P2P is mainly from Major Label. Plus some indie artist give away some of there music so they can promote themselves. After all if nobody knows who the hell you are how are you going to build a fanbase that will go to your concerts. Thats where they make there real money. Its never been cd sales. In a new world were everybody has a voice. What is good is going to rise to the top and what bad is going to sink to the bottom. Maybe its because your bands just isnt that good. Besides if you do what you do just to make money your probably not going make very good music. But if you do what you love your more likely to make something thats good and at that point people are more willing to support you. I have donated money to bands who gave away there music. Not because i had to, but because i wanted to. I dont buy or download music from the riaa. Because there music sucks and i dont want give my money to a nazi like organization.

  18. Burden of proof
    What is the burden of proof? To initiate a lawwuit against an individual, they need to accumulate a fair bit of evidence. How much evidence do they need to send of these warnings? What if they just blanket email eveyrbody three times and get everyone cut off from the internet. Seems like that would wrap up the whole P2P issue . . .

    What sort of incentive can the RIAA offer the ISPs to go along with this scheme?

  19. DPinMarkham says:

    The benefit to ISPs
    I’d be interested in hearing the benefit or perceived benefit to the ISPs. I suspect, there are no benefits to the ISPs whatsoever. I suspect its easier for them and less costly to sue a 100 ISPs then 35,000 people. The cost must be enormous event for the RIAA. RIAA will simply threaten the ISPs. Interesting enough, I suspect some of the larger ISPs have teams of Lawyers armed to do battle or will simply capitulate. If the ISPs capitulate, this will open the flood gates to threaten the ISPs for all sorts of things. Although ISPs keep logs around, they do not keep logs around indefinitely and what about people who encrypt their traffic? Will RIAA expect ISPs to decrypt every piece of traffic over a given port? That would be intensive.

  20. Re: Terry
    You said: “Our CD sales are, according to our independent label, a tenth of what they would be if so much of our music was not illegally downloaded.”

    Your independent label is obviously misleading you here. First of all hardly anyone buys CD’s anymore. Even if your music wasn’t illegally downloaded your CD sales would still be down considerably. Second, it sounds to me the label you are with is too busy using the P2P excuse rather than actually working the problem and finding different more innovative ways to promote your band and bring in sales. It doesn’t sound to me like they have exhausted all online means of promotion, or even understanding the market they now face. I would seriously look for a more tech savvy label, and or promotions company to help your band.

    It’s too easy for the labels and artists to blame P2P when a band isn’t succeeding, and comparing numbers of sales from the 90’s to reinforce this to those in the industry, rather than commit time and resources needed to do their market research . Over the past decade, the market has changed. I think your band needs representation that can keep up with that change. Myspace and Itunes isn’t the be all and end all of the bands or labels job in promotions.

  21. summary of the above
    if i don’t have money , YOU STILL AIN’T gonna make any from ME.

    Got the idea, however id i like it and tell a friend who wants the album covers and a collector copy and support you , then if he can afford it you get a sale by word a mouth.

    If you suck, then you should not make any money and people will spread that round too.

    Hrm, now that i think of it 99% of it does suck.
    And i think in the past 10 years Ive actually p2p’d twice for music, YA i got it all before 2000 that i like.
    Nothing since has made me want to download music at all.

  22. Sucks to be you guys
    I’ve been reading up on this, they still haven’t won a law suit in Canada. You guy should take a page from our book…

    P2P is like going to the library and photo copying a page, or even a whole book you going to start slapping students, teachers, and researchers with copy-write infringement… They don’t pay for their copies, not the actual copies what they pay for is the paper and the use of the photocopier.

    Copyright laws were put in place to protect the artists or original creators of the work, from people;

    1. Copying it and saying it’s there own rather than giving the original artists or creator credit, “NOT COPING IT AT ALL”

    2. Modifying the original content without the explicit permission from the artist or “original creator”

    3. (and my favorite) Distribution which doesn’t actually pertain to what your all arguing about it, actually pertains to weather or not people have permission to publish and distribute it. Once published and the mass media have been given permission to distribute it, is actually as far as the copyright law are supposed to go…

    UNLESS I’m coping it and selling it or charging money to view, listen or have access to it without paying royalties to the appropriate people.

    People who are downloading it for free aren’t the real criminals. It’s these pay-sites(which make well over 10s of millions in illegal sales) that people are paying to join to get access to media that they believe that these pay-sites are getting permission sell or make money off. When they are actually not, they are pocketing the money with out paying royalties to the owners to the copyright.

    Basically Copyright laws weren’t put in place to protect the individuals selling the material or media. They were put in place to protect the artists or “original creators” from the people trying to take credit for their work and from the people selling the material or media without giving the artists or “original creators” their due…

  23. channel computative,
    http://www.supra-shoess.com
    is whole area of library raising a handleless cup at the same time the number of brandish lever is afraid no less than 10 thousand people, angle because of what this also reminds