In their latest attempt to intimidate users of P2P services, the RIAA is sending threats to individual users.

The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."

"We're expecting to send at least a million messages or more per week because these users are offering to distribute music on Kazaa or Grokster," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Yeah? Well guess what buttmunch, YOU can be easily identified, and YOU can face legal and other penalties as well. Keep pushing your thug act, and you'll wish a cute little minor web page hack like Madonna got was all you were getting thrown at you.

Besides that, there are many more of us pursuing the free exchange of information than there are of you industry hacks. We have votes. Screw with us enough to motivate the base, and we'll throw all your paid-off congressmen out of office, and get the copyright laws put back into some proper balance.

Do you think you can get your hack judges and congressmen to start sending millions of people to jail for swapping song files? You ain't near got the juice.

Go ahead, keep screwing with us and see where it gets you.

UPDATE
Here is the text of the message:

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT WARNING: It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. Distributing or downloading copyrighted music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is ILLEGAL. It hurts songwriters who create and musicians who perform the music you love, and all the other people who bring you music.

When you break the law, you risk legal penalties.There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a "file-sharing" system like this.

When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified.You also may have unlocked and exposed your computer and your private files to anyone on the Internet. Don't take these chances. Disable the share feature or uninstall your "file-sharing" software.

For more information on how, go to http://www.musicunited.net/5_takeoff.html.

This warning comes from artists, songwriters, musicians, music publishers, record labels and hundreds of thousands of people who work at creating and distributing the music you enjoy. We are unable to receive direct replies to this message. For more information about this Copyright Warning, go to http://www.musicunited.net.