The associations were able to obtain ISP addresses through powers introduced by 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allowed them to issue a subpoena to Internet providers in order to identify individuals accused of copyright infringement.Ĭollectively, the RIAA and the MPAA have sued tens of thousands of people, often forcing defendants to settle cases despite there being no direct evidence of wrongdoing. Whoever paid the Internet provider for that IP address became responsible for any alleged illegal downloads, and were held legally and fiscally responsible. When issuing mass copyright infringement suits, the MPAA and RIAA tracked IP addresses that they believed to have illegally downloaded copyrighted material. Almost immediately, the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA) pressed forward with hundreds of legal cases on behalf of copyright holders, with some cases targeting thousands of people (The MPAA later admitted that it may have inflated piracy numbers by 300% and assumed that each illegal download was the same as a lost sale in its 2008 declaration.) In 2008, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) declared that American film studios lost $2.4 billion to Internet piracy in a single year. As file sharing clients learned from Napster’s demise and ensured they could not be attacked from a legal standpoint, copyright lawsuits turned their attention away from the clients and to their users.
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