RIAA to offer file sharers amnesty - report
The Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) will shortly offer an amnesty to individual copyright infringers, sparing alleged violators the threat of legal action if they delete all unauthorised copies of music they possess and publicly promise to be good in future.
So claim unnamed sources cited by Reuters - the RIAA itself has yet to comment on the matter.
Undoubtedly the amnesty idea has arisen out of the organisation's scheme to sue individual file sharers. Since it was outlined earlier this year, that plan has met with much criticism from the file sharing community and even one US senator, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who has described the RIAA tactics as "excessive" and is planning to investigate the matter officially in his role as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations.
Rather than send out subpoenas - a process recently made harder by a Massachusetts court ruling that they must be served locally, and not mass-mailed from the RIAA's Washington DC legal HQ - the organisation sends out demands requesting good behaviour. If the alleged copyright infringers coughs to his or her crime, but pledges not to share files in future, all well and good.
