Major ISPs Side with RIAA – Will That Make A Difference?

While RIAA has new recruits in its fight against online piracy AT&T, Cox and Comcast, file sharers develop their own ways of staying out of trouble and p2p scene changes altogether with the growth of video and audio streaming sites and the online download services

The RIAA’s new strategy to combat illegal file sharing with the help of its loyal ‘soldiers’ – major ISPs, has been given a green light. Back in December we reported the trade group’s decision towards a shift in its lawsuit approach which it didn’t quite stick to.

So, who are the team players? AT&T and Cox have both confirmed they are now cooperating with the RIAA according to PC World. While Comcast did not point to such‘collaboration’ it did say the policy of sending out warning messages to customers in the interest of the music industry was still on. However, it is not quite clear what does this cooperation of the ISPS exactly involves – in other words, what will get you disconnected

"Since the time we implemented our DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notification process, we've sent hundreds of thousands of warnings to customers but have only had to terminate the accounts of a tiny fraction of them," said Cox's David Deliman as quoted by PCWorld. He stressed that only one-tenth of 1 percent of cases have led to disconnection.

Turning to AT&T now, the company has joined a trial program involving illegal file sharing and the RIAA which, however, doesn’t include (yet) takedown warning letters or a "three strikes" policy.

Last in line – Comcast (whose bad rap acquired through its policy of traffic throttling in the past still have people doubt it) said they have kept the same rules in case of alleged infringement (implying warning messages to customers) but exclude account termination.
"While we have always supported copyright holders in their efforts to reduce piracy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and continue to do so, we have no plans to test a so-called 'three-strikes-and-you're-out' policy."

It will be quite interesting to follow the progress of things in this battle against pirates and if this is the right way to go especially now that new methods of protecting your anonymity while riding BitTorrent sites looking for files to download are constantly emerging.