Tag Archive

Yesterday, as is reported by the 1709 Blog, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that “Music, Movie, TV and Broadband Leaders Team to Curb Online Content Theft“. The press release not only obtrusively evidences the change in wording from “piracy” to “content theft” (see “Too Sexy for Being an Insult: Framing Piracy“), but also advertised two remarkable initiatives: the introduction of a common framework for so-called “Copyright Alerts” and the foundation of a “Center for Copyright Information“. Taken together, these initiatives constitute the most comprehensive attempt of private regulation in the field of copyright since the (failed) attempt of establishing all-encompassing Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s (see also “DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“).

According to the RIAA, the “Copyright Alerts System” will address (alleged) online copyright infringement

with a series of early alerts — up to six — in electronic form, notifying the subscriber that his or her account may have been misused for online content theft of film, TV shows or music. It will also put in place a system of “mitigation measures” intended to stop online content theft on those accounts that appear persistently to fail to respond to repeated Copyright Alerts. Read the rest of this entry »