The Recording Industry Association of America has hit another snag in its quest to prosecute music pirates. Recently a U.S. District judge in Philadelphia ruled that the RIAA could not sue mass groups of people, making it more expensive and time-consuming for the association to cast wide nets of prosecution.
The judge ruled that because individuals do not conspire to commit music piracy together, they cannot be tried in one large lump under the same lawsuit. Despite this ruling, the RIAA is currently suing 532 people, including students from George Washington, George Mason and Georgetown universities.
Although The Eagle realizes that music piracy is wrong, it also realizes that people, especially college students, will continue to download music illegally, and that RIAA lawsuits are not significantly discouraging such activity. We think the new ruling, which is being appealed by the RIAA, is a good way to prevent frivolous lawsuits against nickel-and-dime offenders. If the new ruling holds, the RIAA would have to focus more on catching the big fish instead of catching hundreds of fish at once in one massive legal net.
The recording industry has lost a lot of money in the past few years, but music piracy is not the sole reason for the loss. The industry could help itself by lowering CD costs and releasing more singles, which would decrease the number of music pirates who are driven to piracy because of high music costs. Music is also widely available for replication through CD burners, where people can borrow CDs from friends and even from the local library to create their own copies for free.
Yet there are also many problems in the manner in which the RIAA prosecutes offenders. Currently, the RIAA gathers the Internet Protocol addresses of offenders and subpoenas the Internet Service Providers for users' names and addresses. The problem at AU is that many students move around very frequently, and the IP address from a dorm room does not change when a new student moves in.
If judges eliminate lawsuits that prosecute hundreds of people at a time, the RIAA can focus its efforts on major offenders, frivolous and faulty lawsuits will decrease, and defendants will receive a fairer trial.
