War on Piracy v2.0

It seems the bigwigs at RIAA are ready to try out just about anything to stem the piracy biz. First they began by suing people who downloaded music. That meant suing just about every person on planet earth right?

They managed to sue 30,000 accused file sharers in the last five years. Clearly it wasn’t working, so the music industry said “hey wait a minute, since so many people are downloading, viewing and listening to copywrited content, why not try to squeeze some ads in there.” Accordingly, all such content on Myspace and YouTube wasn’t necessarily pulled down. Instead, the original owners could just choose to put ads on it.

Now in its latest installment against piracy, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced that it will work with internet service providers to sever abusers’ net connections. Just to clarify, abuser here means you. Yes, you with the 20 GB MP3 collection! Under the new plan, RIAA will send notices to ISPs that identify the IP addresses of suspected file sharers. ISPs will then send warnings to their customers and then cut them off if the users fail to curb their illegal downloads. Details are still being worked out, but most reports said downloaders might lose their net connection after the third notice. The termination could last anywhere from three months to a year.

But it seems identifying culprits isn’t so easy. There is the Catch-22 of fair use and besides, many of the law suits by the RIAA resulted in grand moms being dragged into court, based on sometimes specious evidence. To many, internet connections are essential lifelines to school, work, and other important parts of daily life that we will not mention. Considering these, many of RIAA’s detractors will certainly put up a fight. Oh! By the way, the Motion Picture Association of America is also in discussion with ISPs to adopt the same strategy.