Big news… the RIAA announced that they will no longer persue lawsuits against individual music filesharers. Instead, filesharers will receive a notification from the Internet Service Provider (ISP), and may loose net access after 3 “strikes.” ISPs should be cautious, for this could set a bad precedent.
The safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was granted to ISPs because it allowed them to effectively turn a blind eye to the vast amount of content flowing over their network. If a copyright holder sends them a notice of something infringing, they take the offending content down. The theory is that ISPs shouldn’t be put in a position of policing content because it would be a huge burden. I would argue that this will require a great investment of man/lawyer hours (though a PK blogger argues that this would take care of ISP’s “bandwidth hog” problem and others may argue that people are a more sustainable investment than hardware). Further, if ISPs are seen as colluding with the recording industry, it might tarnish their image.
A better answer would be a unified “ISP ethic,” perhaps like librarians, to gain public trust. The 3 strike rule might make them into an RIAA-style bad guy, and the costs of such a plan may mean they won’t be able to cut prices or increase service.