Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

This year, internet service providers have agreed to work with the recording industry in hopes of defeating illegal file sharing. A senior vice president for Comcast, the nation’s second largest internet service provider, Joe Waz, has said that the company has issued 2 million notices (as of March, 2009) on behalf of copyright owners.

The notices are not a policy but rather a standard practice. In a statement, Comcast said, “Comcast, like other major ISPs, forwards notices of alleged infringement that we receive from music, movie, videogame, and other content owners to our customer… This is the same process we’ve had in place for years–nothing has changed. While we have always supported copyright holders in their efforts to reduce piracy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and continue to do so, we have no plans to test a so-called ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ policy.”

Waz made his statements while being part of a panel at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville. An AT&T executive also issued a statement at the same panel that it will also be cooperating with the RIAA by sending notices to customers as a trial program.

Comcast, however, did not state that it will cease customer’s service.

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it will cease the suing of individuals who downloaded music without paying. The RIAA will now pressure Internet Service Providers to protect copyrights.

Due to the increasing unpopularity of the Association for the punishment of over 35,000 individuals has made decided to go with this decision instead. In most of the cases, those individuals have been college students and minors—often the types of people who are least able to afford hefty fines.

According to Wired, a federal jury found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in June in the nation’s only RIAA file-sharing case to go to trial. Thomas-Rasset is said have infringed upon 24 songs and has charged her almost nearly $2 million. Unfortunately for Thomas-Rasset, this trial occurs just two years after the judge claimed a mistrial; in this trial she was ordered to pay around $220,000. Nevertheless, Thomas-Rasset chose to have a new trial instead of settling like the thousands of other users the RIAA has sued or threatened to sue for copyright infringement. Problems were encountered when she testified; claiming that her children may have utilized her computer for the purpose of file-sharing on Kazaa. In her previous trial, she claimed a file-sharing hack hijacked her WiFi connection; although she did not own a WiFi router.

According to Commerce Times, Tim Reynolds, an attorney for the RIAA, explained to jurors that the record companies would prove that Thomas-Rasset, illegally shared songs on the Kazaa network. He claimed that because of women like Thomas-Rasset, this illegal downloading has cost the music industry not only billions of dollars but has also been responsible for thousands of lost jobs. Once again, Thomas-Rasset claims that she did not share files illegally. Her defense attorney, Kiwi Camara, counters that the record companies cannot prove that she shared files illegally. In fact, he called her “one of the industry’s best customers, with a collect of over 200 CDs.”

Earlier this month, the Recording Association of America (RIAA) won a copyright infringement suit against Usenet.com  The lawsuit, which was filed on October 12, 2007, had the RIAA claiming  that Usernet newsgroups contain “millions of copyrighted sound recordings.”   Although Usenet is currently named as the sole defendent, RIAA could in turn possibly sue hundreds of universities, Internet service providers, and other newsgroup archives.  Usenet is a site that lets newsgropus users share documents, music, and other files.  The site works differently than that of many file-sharing sites.  It stores content on servers and makes it available on-demand,  rather than the typical peer-to-peer architecture usually utilized.  According to the RIAA, the decision for the Association exemplifiesthe “courts recognizing the value of copyrighted music and taking action against companies and individuals who are engaging in wide-scale infringement.”  The ruling comes as the RIAA is shifting away from its longtime strategy of targeting individuals suspected of sharing music files online. Instead, the organization is going after companies that make such copyright violations possible.  The RIAA is initiating a new strategy which asks internet service providers to join a voluntary anti-piracy direction which would include the internet service providers passing along RIAA copyright infringement notices to subscribers.  If the notices are repeatedly ignored by the user, the user would therefore face having their service reduced or suspended before a possible lawsuit.