The way this is working is the RIAA - as a very well funded institution with lawyers out the ass - has about zero per unit cost to subpoena all of these file sharers, while for the targets, the cost in real and potential cost in money, time and emotional duress is very high. What we need is some kind of class-action response to this. Amy Harmon reports on the legal storm trooping in the NY Times:

The Recording Industry Association of America has obtained close to 1,000 such subpoenas over the last four weeks to more than a dozen Internet service providers, including Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and several universities, including Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, demanding the names of file swappers. Most Internet providers are notifying the unlucky subscribers by mail that they are legally required to turn over their contact information.

...."They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring the bejiminy out of them," said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last Wednesday, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. "If someone had sent me a letter saying `this is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have gotten my attention. This just seems so drastic."

The ominous letters and a list of screen names culled from court filings that is circulating on the Web underscore the unusually personal nature of the industry's latest effort to stamp out online piracy, which it blames for a 25 percent drop in sales of CD's since 1999. Under copyright law, the group can be awarded damages of $750 to $150,000 for each copyrighted song that was distributed without authorization.

....The notion of paying up to $150,000 for each of the eight songs that the recording industry listed on the subpoena - not to mention lawyer fees of $200 an hour should the family decide to fight a lawsuit - still boggles her mind. "Hopefully when they find out he's just a kid, they'll drop it," she said.

But not necessarily. Frustrated with the failure of warnings and educational campaigns to stem the flood of online music trading, the major music companies said on June 25 that they intended to sue hundreds of individuals as a form of deterrence.

"I guess people didn't take it seriously, but we really are very serious about this," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. "We want the message to get across to parents that what their kids are doing is illegal. We are going to file lawsuits."

some legal experts argue that the tactic is risky, particularly if the industry appears to be concentrating on families with no resources to defend themselves.
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