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No ISP Filtering Under New RIAA Copyright Strategy

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

p a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=255,height=342,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/12/19/commiepics_2.jpg" img width="280" height="375" border="0" src="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/images/2008/12/19/commiepics_2.jpg" title="Commiepics_2" alt="Commiepics_2" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; float: right;"/img /aThe Recording Industry Association of America on Friday announced a new strategy in its quest to curtail online copyright infringement ? a plan that for now requires no filtering from internet service providers./p pMany feared the next stage in the record labels' a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/war-on-file-sha.html"war on file sharing/awould evolve into demands that internet service providers filter out copyrighted material sailing through peer-to-peer protocols ? regardless of fair use. U.S. internet service providers and the content industry have openly a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/google-unveils-.html"embraced/afiltering, and the Federal Communications Commission this summer a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/analysis-fcc-co.html"all but invited/athe ISPs to practice it./p pBut in a stunning development, the RIAA said Friday that, for the time being, it was not embracing filtering insofar as P2P networks were concerned. The plan was part of the RIAA's pledge to a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/riaa-says-it-pl.html"finish/aits five-year litigation campaign, in which it has sued a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/proving-file-sh.html"30,000 individuals/a, most of whom have settled copyright lawsuits out of court for a few thousand dollars. /p pUnder the new proposal, instead of filing lawsuits against individuals its investigators detect sharing music online, the RIAA will send notices to ISPs pointing out the offending parties' IP addresses. The ISPs, in turn, will a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/commercial_notice_template_1217_2.pdf"notify/a(.pdf) the alleged offender in the United States by snail-mail or e-mail of the alleged violations. Violators could lose internet access after three or more alleged violations, said Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman. (The details are still being hashed out, but Duckworth said a procedure would be put in place to administratively challenge violations.)/p pThe Motion Picture Association of America is also in discussion with ISPs to adopt the same strategy. It has sued hundreds of individuals for online copyright infringement of motion pictures./p p"We are not trying to impose a filtering solution at this time on ISPs," said John Malcolm, the MPAA's piracy chief./p pHe suggested the RIAA's new approach could also render filtering unnecessary, although the group has lobbied the incoming Obama administration to a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/mpaa-urging-oba.html"embrace filtering/aas a possible alternative./p p"There is no one-size-fits-all solution," Malcolm said. "Filtering may very well become unnecessary."/p pThe RIAA's Duckworth said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo facilitated the deal between the RIAA and the ISPs. "We were certainly willing and open to changing our current course," Duckworth said./p pDuckworth said the number of letters sent to individuals would far outweigh the number of lawsuits filed./p p"People might realize that they are not anonymous. We think they might stop after receiving one notice," Duckworth added. "There's no filtering. We are simply passing along a notice of detection and the ISPs will forward a notice to the subscriber."/p pWhile peer-to-peer filtering is not part of the latest plan, it could come to the forefront if the RIAA's new tactics fail, industry executives said privately./p pSteven Cohen, Cuomo's chief of staff, applauded the RIAA's new direction. "We wanted to end this litigation," he said./p pAll of the pending RIAA cases, including the infamous a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/not-for-publica.html"Jammie Thomas case/a, will continue, Duckworth said. It was not immediately known how many outstanding lawsuits were out there. She said the RIAA has not instituted a new lawsuit for months, a position of which is disputed by a href="http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html#4754502618256075697"Ray Beckerman/aof Recording Industry vs. The People./p pDuckworth said the RIAA reserves the right to sue repeat offenders and it will continue its lawsuit against LimeWire, which is accused of facilitating file sharing./p pPublic Knowledge, the Washington-based rights group that convinced the FCC to ding Comcast for throttling BitTorrent traffic, was cautiously optimistic about the RIAA's announcement./p pGigi Sohn, the group's executive director, said, "We want to make certain that customers are not cut off from their internet service or have their service altered solely on the basis of a claim by a copyright holder that file sharing is taking place."/p pThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has similar a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/riaa-v-people-turns-lawsuits-3-strikes"concerns/a. br /p pSohn added that "we want to make clear that any arrangements between RIAA and the ISPs should not involve the invasion of customer privacy through the filtering of internet content."/p pThe RIAA's announcement came five years after it expanded its litigation campaign from the Napsers and Groksters of the world to individuals its sleuths detect file sharing on the internet. /p pAfter five years and 30,000 lawsuits, the legal landscape involving file sharing remains undecided. Judges across the nation have disagreed on whether simply having an open share folder of copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network constituted an unlawful distribution, or copyright infringement. Neither the federal appeals courts nor the U.S. Supreme Court has decided the issue./p pWhile most of the lawsuits have settled for a few thousand dollars, the only one that went to trial resulted in a $222,000 judgment against Thomas of Minnesota for sharing 24 songs. Months ago, the judge in the case reversed the judgment, saying he erred when he told jurors they could find copyright infringement if Thomas had an open share folder of copyrighted music./p p emIllustration: a href="http://www.modernhumorist.com/"Modernhumorist/a /em /p p strongSee Also:/strong /p ul li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/riaa-seeks-7400.html#previouspost"Former Teen Cheerleader Defies RIAA Over $7400 File Sharing Tab .../a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/riaa-appealing.html#previouspost"RIAA Appeals Jammie Thomas Mistrial/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/not-for-publica.html#previouspost"Judge Declares Mistrial in RIAA-Jammie Thomas Trial/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/riaa-mpaa-conve.html#previouspost"RIAA, MPAA Converging on Political Conventions/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/riaa-decries-te.html#previouspost"RIAA Decries Texas Woman as 'Vexatious' for Demanding File Sharing .../a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/imagine-riaa-mp.html#previouspost"Imagine RIAA, MPAA in Control of Handbag Industry/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/riaa-decries-at.html#previouspost"RIAA Decries Attorney-Blogger as 'Vexatious' Litigator/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/riaa-making-ava.html#previouspost"RIAA 'Making Available' Argument: File Sharers 'Freeload'/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/do-riaa-snoops.html#previouspost"Do RIAA Snoops Need P.I. Licenses?/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/riaa-sends-spik.html#previouspost"Universities Baffled By Massive Surge in RIAA Copyright Notices .../a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/judge-orders-le.html#previouspost"Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen/a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/11/think-tank-riaa.html#previouspost"Conservative Think Tank: RIAA v. Thomas Mistrial was 'Unreasoned .../a /li li a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/despite-thomas.html#previouspost"Thomas Mistrial Decision Bolsters RIAA Litigation/a /li /ul br clear="both" style="clear: both;" br clear="both" style="clear: both;" a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f9cfece3451ff2b92d81220abf4cde36amp;p=1" img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f9cfece3451ff2b92d81220abf4cde36amp;p=1"/img /a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=f9cfece3451ff2b92d81220abf4cde36" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/img pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired27b?a=4NuH2T"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired27b?i=4NuH2T" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?a=nFcCO"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?i=nFcCO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?a=xjdqo"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?i=xjdqo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?a=WEZeo"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?i=WEZeo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?a=PVglO"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired27b?i=PVglO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired27b/~4/490012421" height="1" width="1"/

Full post as published by Threat Level on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).