Poor Mojo's Newswire

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Friday confirmed that it will abandon its practice of suing individuals for online piracy in favor of working with Internet service providers to track down offenders. The RIAA is partnering with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and several undisclosed ISPs in order to alert the ISPs rather than the individual customer when it finds people who are swapping pirated tracks online. This tactic has been used for some time now by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Cuomo will encourage ISPs to participate in this voluntary program, which will use a graduated response program. Instead of the RIAA sending lawsuits directly to consumers, the RIAA would notify the ISPs, who would then contact their customers. People who ignore the warnings from their ISPs could be subject to a slowdown in service or loss of service completely, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story Friday morning.

I am the law. That's the message Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to send in a little-noticed court filing last week, in which his lawyers asserted that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records are turned over to the National Archives after he leaves office. But the law exempts "personal and partisan" records, which Cheney's lawyers said he will be the sole decider upon.

Posted in (K)onspiracies, both local and national - (K)ulture. Posted by Alan at 01:11 PM | Permalink