San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties group, on Thursday released a 20-page white paper that chronicles the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) four-year legal campaign against illegal file-sharing.

The EFF concludes that, despite having filed over 20,000 lawsuits against individuals suspected of committing copyright infringement on file-sharing networks, the RIAA has not succeeded in decreasing the amount of illegal file-sharing worldwide.

According to BigChampagne, a research firm that monitors usage of several popular peer-to-peer networks, peak monthly U.S. file-sharing traffic has grown from 3.8 million users in August 2003, shortly before the RIAA launched its legal campaign, to 9.35 million this year.

Instead of suing consumers, the EFF advocates for a voluntary collective licensing regime, wherein the music industry would collect a monthly fee from file-swappers, which would in turn be divided among artists and copyright holders based on the relative popularity of their music.

Related Links:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf