Friday, December 19, 2008

RIAA Will Cease Lawsuits Against Individuals Who File Share

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an agreement with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that the RIAA's members will discontinue their strategy of seeking widespread litigation against large numbers of individuals suspected in trafficking in unauthorized recordings going forward and instead adopt a strategy of coordinating with Internet service providers to notify individual customers of suspected violations via e-mail.

What does this mean?

  • Existing, pending lawsuits against individuals will remain
  • The RIAA retains the right to sue individuals even though they are not planning to do anything about it for the time being
  • Colleges and Universities shouldn’t get those pre-litigation letters from RIAA members any more
  • No new lawsuits will be filed against anonymous individuals (the ones that go to ISPs to determine the identity of those anonymous individuals – again the RIAA still retains the right to do this again.

via The Wall Street Journal & BetaNews.com