RIAA to halt lawsuits, cozy up to ISPs instead

[AsahinaKimi]

At last, the music industry admits what we've known for years: That filing music-swapping lawsuits against teenagers, little old ladies, and corpses is a fool's errand (not to mention an expensive headache for the defendants). But don't worry—the RIAA has something new up its sleeves.

The new strategy (as reported by the Wall Street Journal): If the music industry finds out that you're swapping music files online, it'll send an e-mail to your ISP (agreements have already hashed out agreements with "some" unnamed service providers, apparently), which will in turn forward the message to you—probably with a little "P.S." asking you to stop.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/31678>Link

[BlooInBloo]

1. (facepalm) They'll never learn. Pssst to record companies....

We'll win. You can't stop us.

You can, however, get customers ON YOUR SIDE.

But you won't. So we'll win.

[bluestateguy]

2. I will now end my 5 year long CD boycott

Not that I can see a reason to go buy a CD anytime soon...

[TomInTib]

5. I'll send you one of mine.

For free.

[DJ13]

3. I think this is the ISP's idea

It allows them to use the issue of piracy to set a legal precedent for throttling their service speed.

Once they set that precedent (and what government agency will say fighting piracy is a bad thing?) they can begin to charge for tiered access rates, which they've been trying to get approved for a couple of years.

[kenny blankenship]

4. It's the NSA model - don't use the courts. Corporations can exercise power without oversight

Corporations - government Is there really any reason these should be treated separately?