“There's no filtering," said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. “We are simply passing along a notice of detection and the ISPs will forward a notice to the subscriber." Many feared the next stage in the record labels' war on file sharing would include demands that internet service providers filter out copyrighted material sailing through peer-to-peer protocols — regardless of fair use. U.S. internet service providers and the content industry have openly embraced filtering, and the Federal Communications Commission this summer all but invited the ISPs to practice it.
But the RIAA said Friday that, for the time being, it was not pushing real-time censorship as the replacement for its aggressive litigation campaign against file sharers, which it now intends to wind down.
That five-year long legal effort has seen the RIAA sue 30,000 individuals, most of whom have settled copyright lawsuits out of court for a few thousand dollars. Under its new proposal, instead of filing lawsuits against a sampling of individuals caught sharing music, the RIAA will send notices to ISPs pointing out the offending parties' IP addresses. The ISPs, in turn, will notify (.pdf) the alleged offender by snail-mail or e-mail of the alleged violations.
Violators could lose internet access after three or more alleged violations, said the RIAA's Duckworth. The details are still being hashed out, but Duckworth said a procedure would be put in place for accused users to administratively challenge violations. The Motion Picture Association of America is also in discussion with ISPs to adopt the same strategy. It has sued hundreds of individuals for online copyright infringement of motion pictures.
“We are not trying to impose a filtering solution at this time on ISPs," said John Malcolm, the MPAA's piracy chief. He suggested the MPAA's new approach could also render filtering unnecessary, although the group has lobbied the incoming Obama administration to embrace filtering as a possible alternative. “There is no one-size- fits-all solution," Malcolm said. “Filtering may very well become unnecessary."
The RIAA's Duckworth said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo facilitated the deal between the RIAA and the ISPs. “We were certainly willing and open to changing our current course," Duckworth said. Duckworth said the number of letters sent to individuals would far outweigh the number of lawsuits filed.
“People might realize that they are not anonymous. We think they might stop after receiving one notice," Duckworth added. While peer-to-peer filtering is not part of the latest plan, it could come to the forefront if the RIAA's new tactics fail, industry executives said privately.
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