In the past, the RIAA have accomplished their task by invoking the Digital Copyright Act of 1998 and delivering subpoenas to the relevant Internet Service Providers to release personal information about their victims.  However, the American Appeals court has blocked this route based on the grounds that the illegal material in question lies not on the systems of the ISPs, but on the individual’s own hard disks.  In response, the RIAA have now tracked people sharing files by their IP address (rather than the actual files shared), thus opening up another legal way to deliver subpoenas and take action.

Tracing individuals through their IP addresses also formalises the process of hunting persistent file sharers.  Instead of operating by way of a “digital dragnet”, each subpoena will have to be passed through a judge before being issued, in turn eliminating any random actions just to “make (an) example of an offender”. 

With the threat of possible legal action lurking over the heads of P2P users, file sharing has reportedly halved at the start of 2004 compared against figures one year ago.  To date, 800 individuals have been/are about to be legally punished for their file sharing activities, each to the tune of about $3,000 each.  No individuals have been named yet, the RIAA referring each case under the name “John Doe”.

Affected ISPs are awaiting official notification from the RIAA before making any formal comment or action.