The recording industry has announced its plan of abandoning mass lawsuits against thousands of people accused of committing online piracy by illegally downloading copyrighted materials.
Since 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued more than 35,000 people which had made a lot of controversy because of the inaccuracy of the legal proceedings because most of the accused are minors, computer illiterate, and some are even dead.
The record industry has decided to shift to a new and more effective strategy in combating online piracy because mass lawsuits can protract the time to resolve the looming problem of piracy and also demands large funds.
Instead of chasing after file-sharers, the group decided to seek the cooperation of Internet Service Providers (ISP) which can take actions against clients who are illegally downloading media contents.
While the agreement has not yet been fully resolved, the group said that ISPs can alert its clients if they started to download copyrighted materials. If the users continue the illegal file-sharing activity, they can get two or more email warnings. And if clients did not heed the warning, the ISP will provide slower service, and ultimately cut off their Internet connection if they will continue on downloading copyrighted materials.
In a statement, RIAA said that it has made agreements with several major ISPs but has declined to give names.
Under this new online piracy campaign, RIAA would no longer require ISPs to disclose the names of the accused unlike in its previous strategy but would only demand to the service providers the emails of people who illegally downloaded media contents.
Meanwhile, RIAA had defended its mass lawsuits against thousands of Internet-users saying that filing legal cases to people will make “them understand that their actions are not anonymous.”