CNET: Six Months In, No RIAA Deals With ISPs on P2P

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 4, 2009 - 10:24am.

San Francisco - Six months after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced it would cease its litigation campaign against file-swappers and instead focus on working with ISPs to curb unauthorized downloading, the group has yet to announce any deals with any ISPs, CNET News.com reported.

"We have been working slowly but surely, directly and through the offices of (New York Attorney General Andrew) Cuomo, with virtually every major ISP on common approaches," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told CNET.

"During the past six months, a number of different ISPs have forwarded nearly half a million RIAA notices to P2P infringers. They had not done that before last winter. A number of individual ISPs now argue that notices alone are proving to have a sufficient deterrent impact."

However, the fact remains that even AT&T (NYSE: T), which is reportedly testing a "graduated response" system with the music industry, has stated it will not shut off Internet access to subscribers without a court order.

"Every day that passes we realize how important Internet connectivity is to people's lives," Cindy Cohn, legal director of digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CNET.

"The RIAA looks so out of step with what most people think is a reasonable response to (copyright) infringing behavior. Even to the people that believe we're locked into this 19th century view of copyright law, the RIAA looks hysterical."

http://snipurl.com/jg9mt (DMW previous coverage)

http://www.riaa.org