The RIAA or Recording Industry Association of America decided to change tactics in its constant war against no good doers who share music illegally. Unfortunately, the institution’s alternative method of punishment may be just as burdensome, ill-devised and generally harmful as the previous one.

As explained in the Wall Street Journal, from now on, people who share music indiscriminately won’t have to worry about ending up in court, but they should double check their Internet connection and see if it’s still functional. Because the RIAA is dead set on gaining the power to say who has the right to the Internet and who doesn’t.

Their plan involves establishing direct agreements with Internet Service Providers or ISPs in order to hunt down dastardly sharers of musical content. As soon as the suspects are spotted, the RIAA will notify their ISP who will in turn scold the user and then suspend or discontinue the connection if the scolding is ignored.

Unfortunately, this new RIAA plan has some inherent flaws which might result in simply making everyone unhappy. Besides coming close to violating information rights, the access-restricting idea implies that the institution is indeed capable of finding the right miscreants. But, back in the days when people who shared music illegally were sued, the RIAA made quite a number of mistakes, some of which have become pretty famous – like the time when it wanted to sue a deceased woman who had died aged 83 and probably was far from being a computer geek.

Perhaps the RIAA should consider a more temperate and all-around beneficial method of solving the massive increase in unofficial sharing of music. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests a legal peer-to-peer network allowing fans to swap music as they wish in exchange of a small monthly fee. People seem to really like the idea, as shown by a survey made this summer.