Andrew Eichner
The dawn of peer-to-peer networks and the subsequent rise of file sharing over the Internet have proved to be a considerable threat to the revenues of the Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA”) and the international music community. While early music downloading across peer-to-peer networks on the Internet was largely limited “to college students with access to fast pipes and techno geeks sufficiently driven to search the Net for the latest Phish bootlegs,” the market for illegally downloaded music taken from file sharing websites has expanded to astronomic proportions and continues to do so even at present. The results of this expansion proved doubly costly to the RIAA, as the record industry has suffered reduced music sales and has simultaneously attempted to wage a multifaceted war against file sharers and their networks. Yet, the RIAA’s strategies have ultimately damaged the association’s reputation and also the music industry generally. Due to their choice of targets, “[t]he media and public have cast the RIAA as a villain that sues single mothers and even the deceased.” Despite pursuing their cause even to the extent of suffering harms to their reputation, the RIAA‟s efforts have proven largely fruitless as record sales have continued their downward trend. The failure of the RIAA to properly handle the issue of file sharing is evident from the record industry’s depressed financial statistics and the general public’s outcry against the association’s tactics. This Note addresses some of the alternative (and potentially more popular) methods available to the RIAA in its efforts to overcome the rise of illegal file sharing.