The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Friday confirmed that it will abandon its practice of suing individuals for online piracy in favor of working with Internet service providers to track down offenders.

The RIAA is partnering with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo [pictured] and several undisclosed ISPs in order to alert the ISPs rather than the individual customer when it finds people who are swapping pirated tracks online.

This tactic has been used for some time now by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Cuomo will encourage ISPs to participate in this voluntary program, which will use a graduated response program. Instead of the RIAA sending lawsuits directly to consumers, the RIAA would notify the ISPs, who would then contact their customers.

People who ignore the warnings from their ISPs could be subject to a slowdown in service or loss of service completely, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story Friday morning.

In exchange for this voluntary system, record companies have agreed to stop suing individuals for thousands of dollars per download, a system that has resulted in RIAA lawsuits against everyone from teenagers to unwitting grandmothers. The RIAA will also stop longer sent pre-litigation letters to colleges and filing “John Doe” lawsuits.

Pending lawsuits, however, will continue, and record companies have the right to sue those individuals who ignore the warnings from their ISPs.

Washington-based interest group Public Knowledge praised the plan, but expressed concern about consumers losing service and possible invasions of privacy.

Public Knowledge has “no objections” to the RIAA working with ISPs, but “we want to make certain that customers are not cut off from their Internet service or have their service altered solely on the basis of a claim by a copyright holder that file sharing is taking place,” Public Knowledge president and co-founder Gigi Sohn said in a statement.

Sohn also said that “any arrangements between RIAA and the ISPs should not involve the invasion of customer privacy through the filtering of Internet content. The public deserves to know more about these processes before they are put into place.”