Music industry dumps monitoring firm, but anti-piracy campaign continues
By John Lister
The music industry’s trade body will no longer use the services of a controversial piracy monitoring agency. But the Recording Industry Association of America will continue to hire a professional body to hunt down unauthorized downloaders.
The RIAA has confirmed it is dropping its deal with MediaSentry, a firm which specializes in trapping copyright pirates. Employees for the firm revealed the work mainly involved using direct peer-to-peer programs such as Limewire and Kazaa to search for and download songs which appeared on a database of RIAA members’ output.
That system had thrown up some legal questions as there was no proof the offender had actually shared the file with anyone other than MediaSentry itself. One legal theory has it that copyright infringement is only actionable where the offender shares with somebody other than the copyright holder or their representative (in this case, MediaSentry).
Other complaints against MediaSentry included its staff apparently using underhand methods to encourage users to visit sites to download copyrighted material (which raised questions of entrapment), and claims that the firm was carrying out investigative work without a valid license as required by some states.
The RIAA will now use the services of Copenhagen-based DtecNet, which provides similar services. It’s not yet clear whether there will be any legal significance to using a firm which is outside the jurisdiction of the United States legal system.
The changes come as the RIAA changes tactics away from suing individual downloaders, instead pressuring Internet service providers to crack down on subscribers who breach copyright laws. That’s already met a frosty reception from ISPs unwilling to bear the cost of such actions.
The RIAA also wants ISPs to agree to cancel service to any subscriber who is caught downloading material for a third time. To date, no ISP has publicly committed to follow this program.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
under
Read more entries by John Lister.
Stumble It!
January 6th, 2009
They’ve lost what little public sympathy they might have had by trying to make examples of ‘little people’ with ruinous, wholly inappropriate, grossly disproportionate and laughably vast and pointless fines.
(note how when Bush said ‘The Beatles’ were one of his iPod tunes – at a time when they were not legally available – no-one ever tried to take him to court)
Now they think they can twist the ISP’s arms to stop sharing.
It’s just another pointless ‘King Canute’ act.
The truth is that sharing will never stop.
The truth is that instead of wasting millions on ever-more annoying
(to paying customers only, not actual commercial ‘pirates’ = the only real ‘priates’ out there)
DRM/’security’ they ought to be offering the kind of ‘added value’ in the retail package that encourages a sale.
It’s also true that supposedly ‘illegal’ downloading for non-commercial ‘try before buy’ personal use actually encourages sales.
The bit the industry can’t abide is that they also can ensure a definite no sale, their product is all too often over-priced garbage and simply not worth buying.
But the truth is that even if a download was not avialble no-one would have bought the garbage on offer anyways.
No sales are lost because there would never have been a sale to lose in the 1st place.
Even the motor industry will let you test-drive a car for several days or even a week or two.
January 6th, 2009
I note with interest that Apple — as announced at the press conference — is working busily away to offer all its titles without DRM. And it ain’t doing too bad, despite that.