Legal News

Recording Industry to End Litigation Strategy; Thanks, Judge Davis?

By Dan Slater

Major news for online music geeks: The recording industry plans to lay down its litigation offensive against music pirates in favor of a more PR-friendly, if not more effective, strategy. Instead of suing thousands of people for stealing tunes via the Internet, it will rely on the cooperation of Internet-service providers.

As the WSJ explains:

Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take. . . .Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. . .

We like to think that, more than PR problems, the RIAA changed course because of a recent decision by a federal judge in Minnesota.

On September 25, the Law Blog asked whether liability for music file-sharing was on its way out the door. Why? Because last year, in the first ever file-sharing trial, a jury found Jammie Thomas, a single mother, liable for copyright infringement for offering to share 24 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. Thomas got hit with a $222,000 verdict. At trial, Judge Michael Davis told the jury that merely making songs available for distribution — known in copyright circles as the “making available” standard — was enough to constitute a copyright violation. In other words, the record companies didn’t have to prove actual distribution took place. But then, in September, Judge Davis not only decided his instructions were wrong, but he also implored Congress to change copyright laws to prevent excessive awards against individuals in similar cases.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).