RIAA to change anti-piracy tactic, abandon lawsuits

[york weir]

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is planning to end its tactics of suing individual users who are caught sharing music online. According to the Wall Street journal, the RIAA has opened legal proceedings against roughly 35,000 people since 2003, which has done little to stop the illegal downloading of music over the Internet. Instead of lawsuits, the group has instead made preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which users caught uploading music illegally will receive emails from the service provider asking them to stop, possibly accompanied by a degradation in connection speed. Should the user continue to illegally upload music, the ISP could eventually decide to cut off their access altogether. The ISPs with which the RIAA has already reached agreements have not yet been named.