Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has ordered the Recording Industry Association of America to show why the subpoenas sent to 19 George Washington University students in the case Arista v. Does 1-19 should not be quashed. Doe 3, an unnamed GW student who is a defendant in the case, argued that the RIAA has acted wrongfully under the Cable Communications Policy Act (CCPA) to obtain subpoenas for the names of students linked to specific IP addresses.
The judge's order is a setback for the RIAA in its campaign to deter students from engaging in illegal music sharing. The order comes on the heels of another court case, Interscope v. Does 1-7, in which Judge Walter D. Kelley, Jr., ruled that the CCPA was the incorrect law to use to request subpoenas because the College of William and Mary is not a cable operator. He also noted that even if William and Mary were an operator, only a government entity may get court orders to obtain individual information linked to a cable subscriber.
These developments are significant because they could provide legal validation for the commonly-held belief that the RIAA has engaged in a legally-unjustified fear campaign targeting students.
The RIAA's methods have proven to be haphazard, unfair and ultimately ineffective in preventing illegal file sharing. They unjustly punish a small number of students, making them pay exorbitant fines, while letting the majority of illegal downloaders go unpunished. If Kollar-Kotelly rules in favor of Doe 3, the RIAA's methods for punishing illegal file-sharers will turn out to be not only ineffective, but possibly unlawful too.
However, while the RIAA's means are easily criticized, the ends they are pursuing are not: The recording industry is ultimately justified in its desire to remain a viable industry. The way the industry works now, students who download music illegally should be punished. But the RIAA would be better served by recognizing that its strategy of deterrence is outdated and by changing its policy to better reflect the current technological environment.
The RIAA should look at the various ways in which other industries have responded to the growing power of the Internet. The newspaper industry, for one, now makes most of its content free for online consumption and recoups its losses in other areas, such as advertising. Such a response acknowledges that the Internet is not going away and takes advantage of the opportunities it presents.
While the music industry may have the right to pursue abuses of copyrights, the industry's failure to come up with a workable strategy for the technological age is detrimental to its own goals, unfair to students and, most importantly, possibly legally unjustified. Clearly it is time for a change.
