Last month, when the Recording Industry Association of America said it intends to work with broadband companies to sanction alleged pirates, the plan raised a host of questions.
One of the
biggest was which service providers were willing to work with the RIAA. At first, the major ISPs denied wanting anything to do with the plan. But now, Cnet is reporting that two large ISPs -- Comcast and AT&T -- are on board with the initiative.
Neither company
has made it official, but Cnet's sources say that both are going to forward takedown notices to alleged file-sharers and then impose sanctions including, potentially, service disconnection.
If so, it's a disturbing development for several reasons. First, the people identified as file-sharers by the RIAA aren't always guilty. In one of its more famous blunders, the organization sued a
deceased grandmother.
Additionally, even those who transmit copyrighted content might be innocent of infringement in certain circumstances. For instance, if they're making fair use of the
material, they're not infringing. But determining whether particular uses are legitimate isn't easy. Currently, judges struggle long and hard with that question when it comes up in court -- but at
least judges are more accountable to the public than ISPs or the RIAA would be.
The RIAA has talked about some sort of procedure for people to protest their innocence, but it's not clear
what that will involve. It's also not clear that people will realize that remaining silent in the face of warnings might work against them later, if they're targeted a second time.
At the
same time, sophisticated pirates -- the ones who profit commercially as a result of infringement -- know how to encrypt material or otherwise stay one step ahead of investigators.
The
RIAA's new plan won't stem the tide of record industry losses any more than its old strategy of suing individual file-sharers. The organization needs to devote its remaining resources to coming up
with strategies that don't depend on making life difficult for music fans.