The Recording Industry Association of America has ended its court effort to force Charter Communications Inc. to turn over the names of customers suspected of illegally trading music files over the Internet.
The RIAA, having lost in lower court, had a recent deadline to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. An RIAA spokeswoman said Thursday that the group was not pursuing the case further and declined to provide more details.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that Charter did not have to comply with RIAA-requested subpoenas for customer names because the MSO had not stored copyrighted songs on its servers.
The ruling and similar ones have forced the RIAA to file thousands of so-called John Doe suits to determine through the courts the names of file swappers.
