Friday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced it would stop suing peer-to-peer users from then on, choosing to work with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in order to punish file-sharers.

Over five years after the RIAA filed the first string of lawsuits against individuals, the new approach now entails gradually sanctioning file-sharers, beginning with a warning and ultimately ending with a disconnection.

Nevertheless, the „three strikes” plan, as it has been called by industry experts, does not clearly state how many warnings the alleged file-sharers would be getting before coming to be disconnected or what time-frame has been set for the latter measure.

During the previous five years, the RIAA sued or threatened to sue approximately 35,000 file-sharers, including teenagers, single mothers and a deceased woman, the whole process having been deemed as a public relations disaster.

The majority of people against whom the RIAA filed legal actions chose to settle and thus paid four-figure amounts of money instead of trying to defend themselves, mainly because they could not afford to pay for a lawyer’s services.

A single case came to a jury trial, a lawsuit filed against single mother Jammie Thomas, which resulted in mistrial in the end.

Given the plan to deal with file-sharers in other ways than taking the legal actions road, the RIAA is now expected to drop the cases that are currently pending, especially since the money they received from the settlements fell way short of covering for the millions the RIAA spent on prosecuting cases.