ANew (Old) Solution for Online Copyright Enforcement After Thomas and Tenenbaum

摘要

Six years ago, Professors Mark A. Lemley and R. Anthony Reese proposed a dispute resolution process as an alternative to lawsuits against facilitators of peer-to-peer file sharing in an effort to combat online infringement without harming innovation. At the same time, technological developments were making lawsuits against facilitators impracticable. In the years that followed, RIAA attorneys and their opponents fought to establish a framework for enforcing copyrighted works against individual online infringers within existing doctrines of copyright law. Unfortunately, while such enforcement is possible, it has proven to be so problematic as to be unsustainable on a large scale. The process costs an obscene amount of money, fails to deter infringement, and appears to the public to force defendants into settling or accepting unfairly high damage awards.