Coal in the RIAA's Stocking

According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not authorize the issuance of subpoenas to Internet Service Provider for the purposes of identifying P2P file sharers. The decision is a blow to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which had mounted a major campaign of lawsuits against individual broadband subscribers who used P2P software to share music files. This tactic was forced by defeats in the RIAA's effort to hold the P2P software companies liable for piracy. Indeed, in a second setback on the same day, the Dutch supreme court (the highest legal body in Europe to yet consider a case on file-sharing software) ruled that the developers of Kazaa software cannot be held liable for how individuals use it.

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