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While making my usual rounds though social networking site Digg, I came across something rather shocking. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) plans to stop suing suspected infringers of copyright material. Yes, that’s right. They plan to stop suing little old grandmothers and children… in favor of a new policy, which is now to go directly to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and report suspected infringers. Now ISPs will be charged with the task of investigating and taking appropriate action against these infringers.

It seems that the RIAA has found a way to get the ISPs to do their dirty work, while avoiding pesky issues like legal hearings and juries that would hang the RIAA out to dry if they had the moments chance. Despite the various legal and trust issues, the music industries accusations are as good as gold with ISPs, as any service provider who refuses the RIAAs request to cut ones service will no doubt be sued for not enforcing copyright laws or not enforcing their own Terms of Service. This will ultimately be pushed down the line to the customers. A lose-lose situation either way.

One has to wonder though, what did the the RIAA promise the ISPs who help out? Why would the service providers even bother to help out the music industry to castrate they’re own customers? I’ll give you a hint, It’s not money. It turns out that the RIAA is giving them a way to unclog their “overloaded” bandwidth. With as much traffic as P2P users produce, the service providers are having a hard time keeping up. Still, cutting customers to improve their own bandwidth has its public relation setbacks. Any ISP willing to follow along with this legally questionable tactic will see a sudden and almost damning drop in their customer base.

I suppose in the end that if someone was accused by the RIAA of copyright infringement, the option to sue back is still open. It just means things have gotten a whole lot harder to do.