ISPs Criticizing RIAA's Tactics

from the don't-want-to-shuffle-paper dept

Partially emboldened by PacBell's decision to sue the RIAA over their deluge of file sharing subpoenas, a group of ISPs has delivered an open letter to the RIAA questioning their actions in going after their own customers. The ISPs are upset that the RIAA is trying to make them "police the internet", and are suggesting that there are more reasonable methods to dealing with this situation that don't involve suing their own customers and pissing off an entire generation of consumers. The RIAA responds, in typical fashion, saying that the only reason the ISPs are protesting is that file sharing is bringing them more high speed customers, and they don't want that to go away. I don't deny that the ISPs are thinking of their own self-interest in filing this letter, but I do find it amusing that the RIAA's argument is that the ISPs are profiting from file sharing. For years the RIAA's complaint has been that there was no way to make money off of file sharing - and now they say ISPs are making money off of file sharing. The real problem for the RIAA is that they didn't realize soon enough that the market was shifting, and that the money was in the connection and not the music itself.

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