The Wall Street Journal has confirmed a report that first surfaced on Jon Newton's P2Pnet blog saying the trade group has given walking papers to Media Sentry, one of the firms it hired to infiltrate file-sharing networks and track down music felons.

According to the Journal, the record industry mongrels are going with a Danish firm, DtecNet Software, for its spook activities. I'm sure they'll do just as fine a job hunting down children, disabled mothers, and dead people.

Frankly, trying to sue file sharers out of existence has failed catastrophically. Record sales continue to plummet, file sharing continues to grow. Worse, these take-no-prisoners tactics have permanently submarined the music industry's already tainted reputation at the precise moment when ordinary consumers have begun to wonder why, in the age of Internet distribution and unsigned bands dominating MySpace, we even need an industry built around shipping music on shiny plastic platters. Nice going, RIAA.

Instead, the record companies will be pursing a different tack: Trying to get ISPs and taxpayers to foot the bill for policing file swappers. They succeeded in Tennessee last November, when the cash-strapped state government agreed to hunting down music scofflaws on its state university networks.

Meanwhile in Rhode Island, the case of Tenenbaum v RIAA resumes tomorrow. In that one, grad student Joel Tenenbaum and his parents Arthur and Judie have enlisted the help of Harvard Law School in an attempt to show that the RIAA's legal tactics are .