• It’s official, the RIAA is tired of suing illegal downloaders. The organization that has been patrolling the industry for the last 5 years now wants to put the ISP’s in charge, because they couldn’t make a difference. The WSJ reports:

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

• The RIAA will now provide the ISPs with information (IP addresses) identifying accounts suspected of sharing music illegally. The ISPs wil then ask the owners of those accounts to stop. After the third request, the suspected infringer might lose his or her Internet connection (TC). This is the most viable option. People know their chances of being sued over illegally downloading music are about the same as being struck by lightning. Scaring people with cutting off their internet connection is much easier and ISP’s can take on many people at once. This may stop some people from downloading so much, but the frenzy will still continue.

• Consolidated Revenue Increased 10%; Pro Forma Growth of 7%
• Consolidated Operating Cash Flow Increased 10%; Pro Forma Growth of 8%
• Consolidated Operating Income Increased 20%
• PS of $0.26; Adjusted EPS of $0.24 Increased 33%
• Free Cash Flow Increased 77% to $928 Million
• Repurchased 40 Million Common Shares for $800 Million

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• Mark Cuban has been telling Comcast they need to eliminate P2P sharing and put a cap on broadband usage.
• Wednesday they will start the capping, charging users stiff prices if they break the 250GB data usage.
• Their claim is 5% of users account for 40-80% of total data.
• 51% of people say they would jump to another carrier if a download cap were forced on them.
• Om Malik has been vocal in saying this will stunt innovation and today’s large data consumers are the average user of tomorrow.

Will heavy data users that break the cap, be more prone to be fed to the RIAA?

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• Roku just signed a deal with Netflix to stream movies through their $99 set-top box while keeping the same monthly price of a regular Netflix subscription.
• Comcast has announced they will introduce a bandwidth limit in October, capping subscribers at 250GB per month.
• Roku VP of consumer products says that Comcast’s impending cap is “unfortunate … but has no direct business impact on us.”
• Roku’s choice of video quality it offers users will help them stay under the cap, but the mere knowledge of a limit will affect consumers’ decisions by causing them to cut back on bandwidth-heavy services.

Will Comcast’s cap affect your downloading/streaming habits?

Made tiny from: Mashable.com original post