The Recording Industry Association of America decided to move from suing individuals regarding music piracy to reaching agreements with Internet service providers because ISP agreements became a viable option, according to an RIAA spokesperson.
While, at New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s request, the RIAA will no longer pursue full-scale litigation initiatives against individuals, the association retains the right to pursue legal action “against egregious offenders and those who ignore repeated notices,” said RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth.
“According to both our agreement on principles with several leading ISPs and what Attorney General Cuomo is urging ISPs in his own conversations, ISPs adopt a graduated response program that would include notifying subscribers of copyright infringement notices from the RIAA,” Duckworth said. “The graduated response program would also provide for a series of escalating sanctions upon repeat notices of infringement, up to and including suspension of the account in appropriate circumstances.”
ISPs have an incentive to participate, she said, considering illegal downloads take up service bandwidth and reduce connection speeds.
“Five years ago, when we began our lawsuit campaign, ISPs were in the business of competing for subscribers and not focused on business partnerships with the content community,” Duckworth said. “Bandwidth congestion was not a major concern. Today, the situation has changed considerably. The business interests of ISPs and the content community have merged. We share a commitment to safe, speedy, legal and robust digital delivery of content uncompromised by network hogs, spammers and con artists.”
She said Internet subscribers have incentive to back the change because chances of legal action against them are lessened. Subscribers would have to ignore multiple warnings.
In the past, Duckworth said lawsuits against individuals were mostly levied randomly.
“We obviously endeavored to focus our efforts on the most egregious offenders, but often those who did not fall into that category were also subject to a lawsuit,” she said. “It can be said that anyone who ignored all the great legal options the marketplace offered and chose to get their music illegally risked a lawsuit.”
Most colleges and universities, she said, essentially already have similar systems in place, where the schools have forwarded notices to the individual. She said most schools have reported few repeat offenders.
“So far as I know, UT has no special relationship with the RIAA,” said Jesse Poore, UT vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “Our technical people call their technical people when necessary. We seldom see a letter these days but process in the usual way if one appears. Our legislative representative probably stays in touch with their representative. UT is off the RIAA list of concern.”
Indeed, from September 2007 to December 2007, the university received 310 copyright infringement notices, UT Information Technology Manager Ashley Barker said. From September 2008 to December 2008, the university received just seven notices. Also these notices were from more sources than just the RIAA.
Poore said UT’s policy has not changed in light of the RIAA decision.
Despite the transition away from it, the litigation campaign against individuals was effective in three ways: More people realize the unlawfulness of illegal music downloading, the music industry is more present digitally and peer-to-peer music swapping has curbed, Duckworth said.
EDUCAUSE Director of Policy and Networking Programs Steve Worona said the RIAA’s old method of action was faulty, and the new one still has problems.
According to its Web site, EDUCAUSE is “a non-profit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.”
Worona said he applauds the RIAA for focusing on commercial ISPs, rather than colleges and universities. He said targeting campuses was problematic because music piracy does not begin during the college years, and illegal downloaders can just move off campus.
Campuses have dealt with sometimes unreliable copyright infringement notices from the RIAA, he said, and ISPs could face similar inaccuracy.
Furthermore, Worona said the RIAA’s new approach of reaching agreements with ISPs still assumes music downloading is a threat to the business. On the contrary, he said the music industry simply had an outdated business model, citing the ability of pay-by-the-song services like iTunes to compete directly with free alternatives like music piracy.
Duckworth cited the success of pay-by-the-song services as a byproduct of the campaign against music piracy, saying the boom of the services roughly coincided with the beginning of the lawsuits and the slowing of illegal peer-to-peer music downloading.