[Macworld]

Post your comments for RIAA stops suing individuals: Are we home free? here

[flybynight]

In a related story, Satan claims that he will no longer tempt Johnny with a fiddle made of gold.

[Jon Seff]

But...but...he's the best there's ever been!

[poochie]

"one nail in it's [sic] coffin. Now the RIAA has put its hands up"

[the__fox]

Brilliant! Now here's your subpoena.

[Tau_Myx]

6000 songs a month? It would take 60 days 24/7 just to listen to that much music. That's not theft, it's obsessive compulsive disorder.

[scotts13]

And exactly what right does the RIAA have to "require" ISP's to do anything, and in fact interfere with their relationship with their own customers? The downloader has done nothing harming the ISP, and they're supposed to threaten to stop taking their customers money?
AND, all on the say-so of organization that has NOT actually identified the "offender", cannot do so unaided, and are quite possibly wrong about the offense in the first place?

[DPG4450Guy]

When you sign up for a service provider, you agree not to use their service to break the law.
Someone running a site with illegally shared copyrighted material is breaking the law.
The copyright owners have ever right in the world to sue the ISP. They can either do that in court, or give them a prior notice requiring them to take down the offending site and/or give them the person's name and address etc. that was breaking the law, so that they can sue to have said person prosecuted.
If you think this is not legal, just ask the folks that used to operate "Demonoid" or whatever torrent site that was that got bitch-slapped big time in a California appeals court.
Downloading is one thing, POSTING is where I see the bigger guilt lies.

[wheat]

Let's not forget that the RIAA earns money for musicians and provides jobs. At a high overhead cost, but still, those musicians need to earn a living and feed their families, and the RIAA is fighting for that out of its own self-interest.

[jmincey]

The ISP is a carrier, not unlike any telco. They are not law enforcement agencies. And it's certainly not the business of the RIAA to tell ISPs how they must deal with their own customers or what policies they should adopt.
If two persons use land lines or mobile phones to conspire to commit an illegal act, are the telecom companies then responsible for that? If two Americans use postal mail to plot a crime, is the US Post Office then responsible?
Jeff Mincey

[DPG4450Guy]

They would be if they were aware of it and took no action to stop it.



What the RIAA is proposing is prior notice to the ISP - in that case, they DO know about it - and if they don't put a stop to it, they are liable. Also note that these sites are in effect "advertising" that they are breaking the law and "encouraging" others to participate in the crime. Not possible in a private phone call or mailing a letter. So it's not the same.



Like it or not, the RIAA is here to stay and so are the various copyright-protection laws. I don't believe every single downloader would ever have any intention of buying a movie or piece of music in the first place, and therefore wouldn't affect the income of the studios and record companies, but a great proportion of them certainly would if they did not get it for "free." And that is theft.

[jman3001]

Who among you has ever made a Cassette tape or CD of your favorite songs? Everyone has.
It's the same thing. We simply live in a digital world now and the record industry, that has ripped consumers off for generations, is now getting slapped back for it's greedy practices. The practices perpetrated by the record industry over the last 80+ years are far worse than any down-loader could ever enact.

[jmincey]

The decision by the RIAA to cease its flurry of legal activity is no less based on economics than its original decision to start the legal activity in the first place.
Jeff Mincey

[akira34]

Making a cassette tape (who uses those anymore?) or cd for YOUR own use is not illegal... Making that same set of music available to untold millions of other people so that they don't purchase a copy of it for themselves is illegal. Doesn't matter if you make it available via download, or send off cds/tapes to all those people, or put up a stand on the street. Ask for money for those (even if it's a small sum) and you're really doing something illegal...
Personally, 99.5% of the music I have has been purchased in one form or another. I either own the cd's or have purchased it via the iTunes store. That remaining half percent is music that simply isn't available for purchase anywhere be it online or brick and mortar stores.
Personally, I store my music on a NAS device (with a RAID 5 array, so it's protected from drive failure)... This way I can use any of my several systems to play the music there. I just wish that apple didn't lock you to just five systems (at a time) for authentication to their DRM crudware.
As for the offenders that the RIAA is now going after... 5000 to 6000+ downloads a MONTH is excessive... I have to wonder, though, if they really mean uploads and downloads, since that would target the people hosting the limewire crud too...
BTW, not sure where Tau_Myx got his numbers from, but based off my iTunes listing, 6000 songs would take about 17-1/3 days to play completely (playing 24/7)... Still an excessive amount, but no where near the 60 days you stated. Even going to round numbers of a 5 minute 'average' song length, you're still only looking at just under 21 days (20.833)...