Music industry drops effort to sue song swappers

RYAN NAKASHIMA

Associated Press

December 19, 2008 at 7:20 PM EST

LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has
abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will
work with Internet service providers to cut abusers' access if they ignore repeated
warnings.

The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of
America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high
legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average
for around $3,500. The association's legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement
money it brought in.

The association said Friday that it stopped sending out new lawsuits and warnings in
August, and then agreed with several leading U.S. Internet service providers, without
naming which ones, to notify alleged illegal file-sharers and cut off service if they
failed to stop.

It credited the lawsuit campaign with raising awareness of piracy and keeping the number
of illegal file-sharers in check while the legal market for digital music took off. With
two weeks left in the year, legitimate sales of digital music tracks soared for the first
time past the 1 billion mark, up 28 per cent over all of last year, according to Nielsen
Soundscan.

“We're at a point where there's a sense of comfort that we can replace one form of
deterrent with another form of deterrent,” said RIAA Chairman and Chief Executive Mitch
Bainwol. “Filing lawsuits as a strategy to deal with a big problem was not our first
choice five years ago.”

The new notification program is also more efficient, he said, having sent out more notices
in the few months since it started than in the five years of the lawsuit campaign.

“It's much easier to send notices than it is to file lawsuits,” Bainwol said.

The decision to scrap the legal attack was first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

The group says it will still continue to litigate outstanding cases, most of which are in
the pre-lawsuit warning stage, but some of which are before the courts.

The decision to press on with existing cases drew the ire of Harvard Law professor Charles
Nesson, who is defending a Boston University graduate student targeted in one of the music
industry's lawsuits.

“If it's a bad idea, it's a bad idea,” said Nesson. He is challenging the
constitutionality of the suits, which, based on the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright
Damages Improvement Act of 1999, can impose damages of $150,000 per infringement, far in
excess of the actual damage caused.

Nesson's client, Joel Tenenbaum, faces the possibility of more than $1 million in damages
for allegedly downloading seven songs illegally, which Nesson called “cruel and unusual
punishment.” The case is set to go to trial in district court in Massachusetts on Jan. 22.

Brian Toder, a lawyer with Chestnut & Cambronne in Minneapolis, who defended single
mother
Jammie Thomas in a copyright suit filed by the RIAA, said he is also set to retry the case
March 9 after a judge threw out a $222,000 decision against her.

“I think it's a good thing that they've ended this campaign of going after people,” Toder
said.

“But they need to change how people spend money on records,” he said. “People like to
share music. The Internet makes it so easy. They have to do something to change this
business model of theirs.”

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anthonyberet (30.12.2008 01:52)