Though cases already in progress, like Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum’s much-delayed, maybe-webcast trial for allegedly illegally sharing 7 songs, will continue, the RIAA has gone on the record saying it is ending the lawsuit program targeting people who illegally download music.
After years of suing everyone from pre-teens dying to hear the hottest new Katy Perry track to baby boomers vying for a complete Rolling Stones discography and everyone in between, the Recording Industry Association of America has halted new lawsuits in favor of alternative deterrents to breaking copyright law, officials said.’
The actual principles for the new, non-lawsuit program are still confidential. The RIAA is currently working with Internet service providers on it, RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol said in a letter to the staff of the House and Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Dec. 23.
‘While this process is ongoing, we have reached a confidential agreement on principles for such programs with several leading U.S. ISPs,’ Bainwol said in the letter.
Comcast and AT&T are two of the ISPs that plan to cooperate with the program, according to a Jan. 28 CNET news article.’ It will probably involve ISPs forwarding ‘take-down notices’ to people who are illegally sharing files, according to the article.
The RIAA also unveiled the revamped antipiracy Music Rules! program for grades three to eight last week to encourage education about the issue, according to the RIAA’s website.
However, some expressed doubt that there is any way to actually prevent users from illegally downloading because of how easy it is to get free music.
Wonderdrug Records President Ken Cmar told The Daily Free Press there is almost no way to stop illegal downloading, regardless of RIAA policies, because many people don’t see it as wrong.
‘For some reason, people don’t equate it with doing anything wrong or illegal,’ he said. ‘The RIAA did what they thought was best, and it didn’t solve the problem. There’s almost no way that you can solve the problem.’
The lawsuit program targeted those who illegally downloaded music through peer-to-peer networks as a last-resort attempt to solve the problem, Bainwol said in the letter.
‘We knew that, in the absence of action on our part, that marketplace was destined to be destroyed by an attitude that suggested there were no property rights on the Internet,’ he said. ‘So we chose our least preferable but only option – lawsuits against end users.’
Discontinuing the lawsuit program ‘basically gives license to people to download their face off,’ Cmar said.
Cmar said the music industry may not remain a lucrative business, and the industry is in big trouble. This will also affect the film and television industries, he said.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said BU was caught in the middle because the RIAA used it as a means to prosecute students who allegedly violated copyright laws.
‘We’re happy not to be forwarding pre-settlement letters or to be responding to subpoenas of alleged violations,’ he said. ‘That never was a place that we wanted to be, and we encourage students to respect . . . property rights.’
He said the university is grateful the RIAA ended the lawsuit program because it ‘essentially created a lot of problems for students and members of the BU community that were unnecessary.’
It is too soon to predict long-term effects because it also depends on how long the new RIAA policy lasts, Riley said.
College of Communication freshman Sarah Coe said she thinks more students will continue to download music illegally because the consequences will not be as harsh.
‘I would assume that this hinders progress in the music industry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t bought a CD in so long. People don’t have a reason to since now you don’t have to buy everything.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
