Image via WikipediaPut this one firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” category, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that RIAA is going to abandon individual lawsuits in favor of pressuring ISP’s to become traffic cops for file sharing.

Frankly I want to know which ISP’s they are working with so I can make sure I don’t use them or purchase services from them. I would hate to have my YouTube uploads mistaken for file sharing by my current ISP like they were by Comcast (old news, Comcast cares does not have to answer that, I don’t use Comcast as an ISP anymore).

That is the inherent danger, while I was busy making YouTube videos (which I have not done in a while), and uploading them, they would continually reset (files were large) meaning I had to babysit the upload rather than fire and forget it. This was an ISP issue, not a YouTube, not a RIAA issue; rather it was all about how the ISP responded to the uploading of videos to YouTube. ISP’s that start playing the traffic cop game can get into a lot of their own Public Relations disaster just like Comcast did when it was found out that they were throttling Bittorrent.

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl. Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take. Source: WSJ

It also makes me wonder about the DMCA safe haven, or other protections for the ISP that are currently in place in that they are a service provider and not responsible for the things that people do on their network. I am not a lawyer (IANAL), but it seems that many of those protections go out the door the minute the ISP becomes a traffic cop, and they will then become liable in some manner. It makes more sense for the RIAA, MPAA, BSA or others to go after the ISP than it does individual users because of the deeper pockets. I believe that this could be a very dangerous stance for an ISP to take, but then I do not have an intimate understanding of the law or the DMCA, or other laws. There might be deals on the table that few know about; this issue might already be addressed in the agreements being made.

This presents a particularly difficult choice for consumers, as ISP’s are the critical component in getting on line. It is still easy to ride your neighbors wireless network, but in the longer run, what will make this more difficult is going to be hammering out the legal issues between people, ISP’s, rights holders, and everyone else who has a vested interest. While it is good to stop the individual lawsuits, how are the ISP’s going to maintain people’s privacy, or ensure that the data is correct. The reason why you get dead people being sued for downloading is because the ISP gave out faulty information in the first place about who owned the IP address.

Tags: riaa, file sharing, pressure, isps, dmca, legal, traffic, cop, questions