TechWag

: Image via CrunchBase

The RIAA still has problems getting ISP’s to agree to sign up for a “Three strikes you are out” policy when it comes to their users using P2P applications on their networks. While this does not mean that it is not happening, what it means is that no one has publicly admitted that they are working with the RIAA.

While it would be great to think that there is no ISP that would work with RIAA to stop users from doing anything, what makes this interesting is not so much that RIAA has yet failed to sign anyone up for the policy, it is that the ISP’s have taken a luke warm approach to all this. The ISP’s in the face of bandwidth shaping issues, connection dropping issues, and download cap issues would be in their own three strikes no customer is going to use that ISP if they could help it situation. With the economy stressed, and people not renewing their contracts with ISP’s already, participating in the RIAA three strikes program could be the one thing that throws customers into the competitor’s hands.

That there are still no announced deals–and there’s no guarantee the RIAA can sign any of the major broadband companies–indicates that at best the big recording companies may have spoken too soon when they said broadband providers would help, says one ISP executive. Ironically, at a time when many figured the RIAA had finally hit upon a compelling way to go after music piracy, the association’s copyright protection efforts may be more toothless than ever. Source: CNET

Techdirt also has an interesting bit to add to all this as a major fail in that with six months of trying to find any ISP to go along with the RIAA concept, there are still no ISP’s signed up for this as of today. While P2P activists might want to celebrate this one, it is still too early to celebrate and declare a victory. ISP’s are already doing things that hamper and in some cases kill the P2P and Bittorrent download via bandwidth shaping. ISP’s by doing this also do not (best of my knowledge) hamper their safe harbor provision within the DMCA by bandwidth shaping, where if they did become an agent of RIAA, they might. I am not a lawyer, and what makes sense to me might be absolutely the wrong information when it comes to the DMCA.

In all this is interesting, but might have to wait until the economy picks up a bit and people start spending money again. While no ISP is going to want to see a rash of customers fleeing because of the three strikes idea, in the longer run, it is going to be more about download caps and bandwidth shaping that will have a bigger influence in stopping/killing P2P than the RIAA three strikes.