EFF report slams RIAA lawsuit campaign, calls for flat-fee, unlimited P2P
EFF report slams RIAA lawsuit campaign, calls for flat-fee, unlimited P2P
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers.1 Four years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened, legal actions against well over 20,000 individuals.2 The targets are not commercial copyright pirates. They are children, grandparents, single mothers, college professors—a random assortment of the tens of millions of American music fans using P2P networks.3 The industry shows no signs of slowing its lawsuit campaign, with the members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filing hundreds of new lawsuits each month4— including, most recently, 400 per month targeted against college students.5 The lawsuits, however, are not working. Today downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits. At the same time, the lawsuit campaign has enriched only lawyers, rather than compensating artists for file sharing. One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.
