Music Industry Gives Up Mass Piracy Lawsuits

The Recording Industry Association of America says that it has abandoned mass lawsuits against internet users who stole music, and instead would work with internet service providers to discourage piracy.

The RIAA, which represents major US record labels, will have the ISP's send warning notices to users who illegally download music files.

Internet users who ignore their first warning notice to stop illegally downloading music could find their internet conections disconnected, the RIAA said.

Since 2003, the music industry has sued about 35,000 internet users for music piracy.

The group Arts+Labs, a collaboration between technology companies and creative artists, said in a statement that it was "encouraged by this new effort by the record companies."

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As someone who loves music, I certainly think that music cannot be stolen. At the same time artists who have spent years perfecting their art and music companies which have invested heavily should not ne shortchanged.

Disconnecting internet connections seems a childish solution and won't work, like the earlier law suits. There are positive outcomes of music and video piracy too. It has been one of the factors in considerably lowering the prices of original music and video discs in India for example. What has helped internet grow so rapidly is it's openness and democratic nature. Unfortunately, the US, where most technological discoveries and innovations of the previous century took place, seems to be going thru a bad phase. Some time back there was talk of Internet Service Providers in the US determining which websites the customers had access to.Now google and the WSJ have a nice discussion going on over net neutrality.

If these steps are implemented, then US would be no more democratic than China. In the long run such restrictive measures would harm the creative spirit which has fuelled the American economy.

There are barriers to individuals who want to integrate with and participate in the digital economy. For example, I am pretty sure I'll continue with blogging for a long time to come and want to purchase a domain name, thru google. It's not possible right now coz I don't have a credit card and AFAIK payment thru other means is not accepted.

So how do we resolved the issue of music piracy? I guess the answer lies in providing an internet - wide, vendor - neutral market place for music.

However, that won't prevent internet users from sharing music they've downloaded. To discourage that prices would have to come down, non - electronic forms of payment accepted and value added services provided to individuals who have paid.

News Source : Ear Sucker dot Com

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