Archive:Three Strikes? They're Out.

The RIAA's New Plan
After five years of suing their customers for alleged copyright infringement, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has decided to abandon the strategy. During their unprecedented legal campaign, the RIAA began legal proceedings against 35,000 individuals. They filed suit against college students, single mothers, people who do not even own a computer, a laser printer, and even a dead person.

Although the RIAA's expensive troupe of lawyers were able to strong-hand thousands of Americans into coughing up thousands of dollars, they did not sustain one victory in court. Every time judge and jury became involved, the RIAA's legal arguments fell apart.

The new tactic, currently being finalized, is perhaps even more insidious. The RIAA hopes to partner with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to permanently disconnect Internet users who are accused of file sharing.

Under the secretive agreements, the RIAA would continue to accuse thousands of normal people of copyright infringemen, but instead of filing lawsuits, their partner ISPs would agree to forward accusations to their paying customers. If this happened three times, the ISP would disconnect their customer from the Internet.

It's Three Strikes and You're Offline.

Three Strikes and You're Offline
So, what's wrong with this? What if, 100 years ago, the horse carriage makers were able to partner with road operators so that you would get you banned from using the public roads entirely, if they alleged your automobile was driving faster than a horse-driven carriage three times? The technology certainly allowed it, but the car challenged the carriage-makers business model. We would never allow such a preposterous tactic because of the harm to our economy, democracy and society.

The RIAA's plan is similar in many ways. Specifically, it has the following problems:

Flawed Evidence
It continues to rely on the RIAA’s existing evidence process that have been struck down by legal authorities. For example, the primary method of identifying alleged infringers is by IP address, yet a judge in Boston recently ruled that this method “is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty”

No Due Process
It leaves little to no room for due process. When the RIAA carpet-bombed cyberspace with lawsuits, recipients had the right to a trial. Those trials never handed the RIAA a victory. Now, the RIAA and ISPs are cutting judge and jury out of the picture.

The Punishment Doesn't Fit the Crime
Even if an alleged file sharer did infringe copyright, kicking them off the Internet is hardly a just punishment. As is evident to anyone who watched the 2008 American Presidential Election, the Internet is an integral part of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Protecting private interests of the RIAA at the expense of the public good is unacceptable.

ISPs Are Sacrificing Their Customers
Kicking off subscribers is plain bad business. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act explicitly immunizes ISPs from liability arising from their customers: "A service provider shall not be liable... for infringement of copyright... in the course of transmitting, routing, or providing connections." Yet, some ISPs are already deciding to disconnect paying subscribers for unproven allegations of copyright infringement.

What Can You Do?
ISPs need to know that their customers disagree! Join Students for Free Culture in pledging to boycott any ISP that drops three subscribers due to unproven copyright infringement.


 * 1) Head over to our YouTube video and reply with a video of your own pledging to dropping your ISP if they strike out.
 * 2) Sign our petition.
 * 3) Contact your ISP and let them know you will not support them partnering with the RIAA. For the contact information of popular ISPs, see here.
 * 4) Spread the word. Blog this. Tweet it. Email it. We still have the opportunity to stop this plan, so let's be heard.