We've long discussed why booting broadband users off of the Internet for copyright infringement is a bad idea. The evidence used is often faulty, it requires ISPs spend money to prop up evolution-challenged labels, and it will be largely impossible to track offenders across ISPs (or even within homes). Studies repeatedly show that heavy P2P users buy more media than the average consumer, and by kicking them off the Internet you're severing a potential sale. There's also the over-arching question of whether terminating a person's lifeline to the Internet is a fair punishment for trading copies of TV shows without commercials.

After discovering that suing their customers wasn't going to stop piracy, the industry got some ISPs to agree to voluntarily terminate P2P user connections. That hasn't worked out well either, with piracy continuing to grow, ISPs facing legal liability for threatening users with false evidence, and the systems they're using being completely non-transparent. In Verizon's case, we've shown you how it appears they're bluffing completely. It's clear that the labels won't be satisfied until a new three strikes law passes, but they've lacked the political muscle to pass such an unpopular concept, even with all their lobbying influence.

So the recording industry appears to be doing what any corporation eager to pass an unpopular law would do. They're launching an astroturf campaign designed to make a U.S. 3 strikes law seem like a good idea to uninformed consumers. Through major label front groups like Music United and efforts like Music Rights Now, the labels are trying to push for three strikes laws by pretending that the idea has broad support -- especially among artists and consumers. Notes Techdirt:With all of the influence the recording industry has in the current White House (take a look at the Vice President's claim this week that piracy is the same as doing a smash and grab at Tiffany's), it seems inevitable that some type of heavy-handed laws will be passed. Of course they won't work to stop piracy -- copyrighted file exchange will simply get more sophisticated, and any laws tasked with tracking pirates from home to home or ISP to ISP will prove futile. Meanwhile, all this effort could instead be put into more innovative legit content distribution systems.