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The Recording Industry Association of America announced Friday December 19, 2008 that it would abandon the practice of mass lawsuits against music downloaders and instead work with Internet Service Providers (ISP) to discourage piracy. They are not going to drop the suits already in progress, a very discriminatory practice. Note that this does not apply to music that is being downloaded legally, generally if you are paying a fee and are using a recognized site you are probably legal and safe.

So what does this statement, “work with Internet Service Providers (ISP) to discourage piracy” mean?

You probably never read it but your agreement with your ISP includes some nasty legal language, just as the ones with your telephone company and power company. Few have ever read them but they basically say that if you do anything that is illegal in the use of their services or do something that harms or could harm other users or the system they have the right to terminate service. Music piracy is illegal so it falls under this.

So what exactly does this mean to the user? If the RIAA determines that you are a music pirate and they notify your ISP that entity may terminate your internet service. ISP’s will have to look at this carefully. If they terminate the service it costs them at least $40 in revenue a month most of which comes off the bottom line because the cost of serving one more customer is very small. One would think that the ISP would just thumb their nose at thee RIAA and forget it.

But all is not as it seems. By knowingly allowing the person to use their services to pirate music the ISP becomes a party in the crime. Instead of filing suits against thousands of individuals they will be filing against maybe fifty ISP’s. These are generally big companies and there is money there. The ISP’s will be more willing to terminate a hundred customers than face a lawsuit that they may lose. A hundred customers is less than sixty thousand a year. You can’t hire many lawyers for that. So the ISP customer gets shut off. And the answer is, “I’ll just get another ISP.” Sure. The cable company disconnects you and you go to DSL if it is available. Then what? The RIAA catches you again and where do you go? Dialup? To download music! Ha! Wireless? Bring money. Then what? You could have someone else in the household contract for the service. Let’s assume the ISP falls for that, it isn’t a solution. And the RIAA will be targeting those they have targeted in the past it is just through a third party.

Let me be frank, I hate the RIAA but I am not a music pirate. I try to abide by the copyright laws. I probably have violated one in ignorance but I am somewhat knowledgeable and pretty careful to stay within them. But the RIAA who yells theft on music piracy has stolen from me. I have CD recorders that I legally use to record messages in church services. The better recorders require “music CD’s” which cost about five cents more each. This money is used to help offset the loss of money to music piracy. But I am not pirating music, I am an agent for the entity that holds the copyright for the material I am recording and in that the copyright is clear. They steal five cents from me on every CD I burn! This is no more moral than the music pirates but because the RIAA can buy legislators to pass laws and blackmail equipment vendors to include circuitry to require this use, it is all nice and legal. The irony of this is most of the use of this kind of equipment is not for pirating. Quite frankly the software on a computer is far more suited for this. Many of the people who use them are like me, they either own the copyright for the material or they are an agent for the owner, providing a recording service. We provide a service and the recording becomes the property of the owner of the copyright. We generally hold an archive copy but only for our own protection. As an aside in church services we are careful to not record music in this except in certain situations where the copyright is not violated because of licenses we hold. The second use many of us make of this equipment is for media shifting, for example transferring the vinyl records and audio tapes people have to CD or MP3. This is generally legal as long as the vinyl or magnetic tape is only used as archive and the use of a CD as an intermediate step is legal as long as it is also stored as archive.

I am not sure how the RIAA views the colleges that really in effect act as ISP’s for the students. They could target the college or they could target the higher level supplier who provides the college with the service. Colleges in the past have held firm to not pass names, etc. But if the college were faced with a cutoff of all internet services unless they took action against a small number of students, what would they do? I think I know. Academia talks a good talk but they are a bunch of wimps when the axe falls.

If you are pirating music, be careful, the RIAA may be looking to make your life miserable by proxy. The reason? What they are doing now is not working. Their purpose in this is not to stop piracy but to gain back the control of the music industry. Until the are in control others share in that money. When they are back in control, they control the money. The major portion comes to them.