RIAA Throws It's Hands Up In a Victory for Humanity

In a victory for filesharers and music swappers the world over, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) sort of threw it's hands up and swore off prosecuting hapless 12-year-olds for sharing their favorite music files with friends and the world. But fear not, the RIAA is not totally going to leave us alone. Their failed "prosecute everyone with more than 1,000 files in their shared folder" strategy will soon give way to coercing ISP's into locking out violaters.

LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers' access if they ignore repeated warnings.

The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association's legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.

The association said Friday that it stopped sending out new lawsuits and warnings in August, and then agreed with several leading U.S. Internet service providers, without naming which ones, to notify alleged illegal file-sharers and cut off service if they failed to stop.

I remember during college days in the early 2000's when Napster, in it's original, uncompromised form, was the land of opportunity for a usership of 26.4 million members. Then the RIAA got ahold of them in court, successfully sued Napster for copyright infringement for allowing users like me to download music for free. Napster saw the handwriting on the wall and retooled Napster to offer copyrighted music in conjunction with the recording industry. I assure you that my thousands of college classmates and I didn't appreciate the forced corporate assimilation of our favorite online music sharing tool, and collectively fled to the likes of Kazaa (before it was overrun by kiddies), Limewire, and various BitTorrent clients.