MPAA, RIAA continue to woo ISPs

As the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) continue to look for ways to combat peer-to-peer piracy, their latest aim has been to work alongside service providers operating in the United States.

CDFreaks recently wrote about how major Internet service providers (ISPs) operating in the United States intend to work with the RIAA on a three-strike policy that would cut Internet access to users caught sharing copyrighted music files up to three times.

Indeed, the current situation between ISPs and copyright groups appears to be overly complicated, yet rather frightening to Internet users and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).   

Onlookers and analysts are extremely curious to see how cooperative ISPs will be when under pressure from the ISPs.  It’s now publicly know AT&T won’t cut Internet access of accused file sharers unless the company receives a court order signed by a judge.

Now that the RIAA has promised not to target individual file sharers with John Doe lawsuits, the organization’s new anti-piracy goals look to become even more intrusive to Internet users.  Of course, subscribers have the right to "due process" and can battle any sanctions if they think it’s unjustified — and with the RIAA’s track record of launching blanket lawsuits against wrong people, it’s extremely likely some wrong people will again be targeted.

"What we are trying to encourage ISPs to do is adopt some form of graduated response," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told the Wall Street  Journal.  "It is our position that people who are repeat offenders merit an account suspension or something like that."

I still believe the RIAA needs to focus more on embracing and monetizing digital content, rather than spending time and energy trying to focus on stifling piracy in a way that is very unlikely to be successful.  I’ll admit that since many ISPs now face problems with file sharing overloading pipelines, ISPs may be more willing to embrace a three-strikes rule sometime in the future.

It should be interesting to see what develops between the copyright groups and ISPs, and it seems only time will tell.