RIAA Loss Could Result in Lawsuit Policy Change

Filed in archive Commentary , Legal , RIAA, IFPI on March 2, 2007

We earlier reported defendant Debbie Foster of Oklahoma was granted attorney fees in Capitol v. Foster, a RIAA copyright infringement lawsuit.

The case sets a significant precedent. To date RIAA has used a streamlined mass-production lawsuit process that resulted in filing up to 10,000 lawsuits a year. RIAA obtained subscriber identities from ISPs based on Internet account use and then indiscriminately sued the subscribers.

If RIAA wants to avoid situations like Foster, they will have to conduct pre-lawsuit investigations to identify actual file sharers, not the ISP subscriber. Such research however will be difficult. The identity of the file sharer is not known on the P2P network at the time of infringement. So the investigation will have to be conducted as an additional step after the subscriber identity is learned. It will be expensive to individually investigate each subscriber and their family, and it will have limited productivity if subscribers do not voluntarily co-operate.