RIAA criticized over anti-piracy tactics

With the start of the school year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched its latest attempt to stem the casual copying and sharing of digital music, but an opponent of the music industry's strong-arm tactics has stated, in a study released on Wednesday, that the initiatives have had little impact on peer-to-peer file sharing.

The study -- published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights group and an outspoken critic of the RIAA's tactics -- notes that since the music industry first filed lawsuits against 261 consumers in September 2003, the group's attorneys have sued or threatened legal actions against more than 20,000 individuals. Yet, peer-to-peer file sharing has nearly trebled to 9.4 million users this year, from 3.8 million users in August 2003, according to data attributed to media tracker Big Champagne.

"There is a better way," the EFF argued in its report, advocating "a voluntary collective licensing regime as a mechanism that would fairly compensate artists and rightsholders for P2P file sharing."