Music group to stop suing song sharers

LOS ANGELES - The group representing the U.S. recording industrysaid Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharingsongs protected by copyright and will work with Internet serviceproviders to cut abusers' access if they ignore repeated warnings.

The move ends a controversial program that saw the RecordingIndustry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs fordefenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, onaverage for around $3,500. The association's legal costs, in themeantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.

The association said Friday that it stopped sending out newlawsuits and warnings in August, then agreed with several leadingU.S. ISPs, without naming which ones, to notify alleged illegal file-sharers and cut off service if they failed to stop.

It credited the lawsuit campaign with raising awareness of piracyand keeping the number of illegal file-sharers in check while thelegal market for digital music took off. With two weeks left in theyear, legitimate sales of digital music tracks soared past the 1billion mark for the first time, up 28 percent over all of lastyear, according to Nielsen Soundscan .

"We're at a point where there's a sense of comfort that we canreplace one form of deterrent with another form of deterrent," saidRIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol. "Filing lawsuits as a strategyto deal with a big problem was not our first choice five years ago."

The new notification program is also more efficient, he said,having sent out more notices in the few months since it started thanin the five years of the lawsuit campaign.

"It's much easier to send notices than it is to file lawsuits,"Bainwol said.

The decision to scrap the legal attack was first reported in TheWall Street Journal.

The RIAA says it will still continue to litigate outstandingcases, most of which are in the prelawsuit warning stage, but someof which are before the courts.

The decision to press on with existing cases drew the ire ofHarvard Law professor Charles Nesson, who is defending a BostonUniversity graduate student targeted in one of the music industry'slawsuits.

"If it's a bad idea, it's a bad idea," said Nesson. He ischallenging the constitutionality of the suits, which, based on theDigital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of1999, can impose damages of $150,000 per infringement, far in excessof the actual damage caused.

Nesson's client, Joel Tenenbaum, faces the possibility of morethan $1 million in damages for allegedly downloading seven songsillegally, which Nesson called "cruel and unusual punishment." Thecase is set to go to trial in district court in Massachusetts onJan. 22.

Brian Toder, a lawyer with Chestnut & Cambronne in Minneapolis,who defended single mother Jammie Thomas in a copyright suit filedby the RIAA, said he is also set to retry the case March 9 after ajudge threw out a $222,000 decision against her.

"I think it's a good thing that they've ended this campaign ofgoing after people," Toder said.

"But they need to change how people spend money on records," hesaid. "People like to share music. The Internet makes it so easy.They have to do something to change this business model of theirs."