Tuesday, 13 February 2007
Topic: News
Ray Beckerman over at Recording Industry vs. The People posted a letter leaked to him presumably by someone who works at an ISP, in which the RIAA asks ISPs for help in both tracking down subscribers suspected of file sharers and convincing them to settle before their cases go to trial.
In light of recent news (broken on Listening Post) that Debbie Foster succeeded in winning legal fees from the RIAA after having their lawsuit against her thrown out of court, this letter could represent the RIAA hedging its bets against similar cases going to trial in the future. The organization wants ISPs to make it clear to their subscribers that if they settle out of court with the RIAA, rather than seeing the case to trial, the cost of their settlement would be discounted $1,000.
That's not the only way in which the letter reveals the RIAA is trying to work with ISPs in order to keep these cases out of court. Normally, the way a P2P lawsuit works is: an RIAA member label spots one of their songs being shared, logs the sharer's IP address, brings a lawsuit against the (still unknown) "John Doe" defendent, and then subpoenas the ISP in order to find out who the particular John Doe is.
Instead of this circuitous route through the legal system, the leaked letter reveals, the RIAA wants ISPs to send form letters to the John Does themselves, asking that they turn themselves in to the RIAA and commence the settlement process. Basically, the leaked letter reveals that the RIAA is sick of having to jump through legal hoops that protect individuals from being policed by a non-governmental organization.
VIA: P2Pweblog.com
No comments:
Post a Comment